when, for example, we have
toppled over from our balance into pleasure, eaten not wisely but
too well, say; and then toppled back into the dumps with an
indigestion. But where the balance is kept you need few ethical
injunctions; the soul is there, and may speak; and sees to
all that.

Hu-Chiu Tzu-lin, we read, taught Liehtse these things. Said he:
"You must familiarize yourself with the Theory of Consequents
before you can talk of regulating conduct." Liehtse said:--"Will
you explain what you mean by the Theory of Consequents?" "Look at
your shadow," said his teacher; "and you will know." Liehtse
turned his head and looked at his shadow. When his body was bent
the shadow was crooked; when upright, it was straight. Thus it
appeared that the attributes of straightness and crookedness were
not inherent in the shadow, but corresponded to certain positions
in the body . . . . "Holding this Theory of Consequents,"
says Liehtse, "is to be at home in the antecedent." Now the
antecedent of the personality is the Soul; the antecedent of the
action is the motive; the antecedent of the conduct of life is
the relation in which the component faculties of our being stand
to each other and to the Soul. If the body is straight, so is
the shadow; if the inner harmony or balance is attained and held
to--well; you see the point. "The relative agrees with its
antecedent," say the grammar books, very wisely. It is karma
again: the effect flowing from the cause. "You may consider the
virtues of Shennung and Yuyen," says Liehtse; "you may examine
the books of Yu, Kia, Shang, and Chow,"--that is, the whole of
history;--"you may weight the utterances of the great Teachers
and Sages; but you will find no instance of preservation or
destruction, fulness or decay, which has not obeyed this supreme
Law of Causality."

Where are you to say that Liehtse's Confucianism ends, and his
Taoism begins? It is very difficult to draw a line. Confucius,
remember, gave _"As-the-heart"_ for the single character that
should express his whole doctrine. Liehtse is leading you
inward, to see how the conduct of life depends upon Balance,
which also is a word that may translate _Tao._ Where the balance
is, there we come into relations with the great Tao. There is
nothing supra-Confucian here; though soon we may see an
insistence upon the Inner which, it may be supposed, later
Confucianism, drifting toxards externalism, would hardly have
enjoyed