Chinese insight early reached a similar thought. Before the days of Confucius or his elder contemporary Lao-Tsze, the wiser observers had noted the uniformity of Nature's ways. Were not Heaven and Earth the nourishers of all things? Did not Heaven pour {215} down all kinds of influences upon the docile and receptive Earth? Heaven was all-observing, steadfast, impartial; and its "sincerity," seen in the regular movements of the sun and moon, or the succession of the seasons, becomes for the moralist the groundwork of the social order. This daily course is called Heaven's way or path, the _Tao_ (the highway as distinguished from by-tracks), which with unvarying energy maintains the scene of our existence, and provides the norm or pattern for our conduct. In the hands of Lao-Tsze this became the symbol of a great philosophical conception. Behind the visible path which all could see lay the hidden Tao, untrodden and enduring. Here was the eternal source of all things, for ever streaming forth in orderly succession, but never vaunting itself or inviting attention by outbursts of display. It was the type for man to follow; the sage, like Heaven, must have no personal ends; he must act, like the great exemplar, without meddling interference, leaving his nature to fulfil itself; let him renounce ambition and cultivate humility; only one who has "forgotten himself" can become identified with Heaven. "Can you"--so Lao-Tsze was said to have asked an inquirer six hundred years before Jesus taught in Galilee--"Can you become a little child?"