deals with the reversal of common opinion as to persons. Its motto is:--Judge not by the appearance. Virtue must prevail and outward form be forgotten. The loathsome leper Ai T'ai To is made Prime Minister by the wise Duke Ai. The mutilated criminal is judged by Lao Tzŭ to be a greater man than Confucius. For the criminal is mutilated in body by man, while Confucius, though men know it not, by the judgment of God is πεπηρωμένος πρὸς ἀρετήν. [46] _Cf. Plat. Phaedr._ 265: κατ' ἄρθρα ᾑ πέφυκεν καὶ μὴ ἐπιχειρεῖν καταγνύναι μέρος μηδὲν κακοῦ μαγείρου τρόπῳ χρώμενος. [47] _Cf._ Herbert Spencer's well-known paradox,--"The sense of duty or moral obligation is transitory, and will diminish as fast as moralisation increases."--_Data of Ethics_, p. 127. This protest of Chuang Tzŭ against externality, and judging only by the outward appearance, might easily be translated into Christian language. For Christianity also teaches _inwardness_, and, in common with all idealism, resents the delimitation of human life and knowledge to "the things which are seen." In its opposition to a mere practical system like Confucianism, Taoism must have appealed to those deeper instincts of humanity to which Buddhism appealed some centuries later. In practice, Confucianism was limited to the finite. Action, effort, benevolence, unselfishness,--all these have a place in it, and their theatre is the world as we know it. Its last word is worldly wisdom; not selfishness, but an enlarged prudentialism. To the Taoist such a system savours of "the rudiments of the world." Its "charity and duty," its "ceremonies and music," are the "Touch not, taste not, handle not," of an ephemeral state of being, and perish in the using. And the sage seeks for the Absolute, the Infinite, the Eternal. He seeks to attain to TAO.