To Ho-shang-kung is ascribed also the addition of a title to each of the eighty-one chapters. These titles consist of two characters each, giving an epitome of the contents of the chapter, and they resemble the headings of chapters and sections in our own books. Many editors, however, reject these inventions of Ho-shang-kung, and use the ordinary Chinese method of distinguishing each chapter by its first two characters. This is considered the more decorous method, as the other seems to be supplementing the author. I come now to the text of the Tao-tê ching, and here the most bewildering uncertainty and confusion are found. Some editors, wishing to have the number of characters as little as possible beyond five thousand, have cut them off apparently at pleasure, and without much regard for the sense of the author. Others have pursued a contrary course, and retained or added characters in order apparently to make out what they deemed to be the true meaning of any particular passage. This conduct has occasioned great variations in the text, and consequently great uncertainty as to what Lao-tzŭ actually wrote or taught. Sometimes one editor, by the suppression of, a negative particle or a word of interrogation, gives to a passage a meaning unlike or even opposed to that which another editor by the insertion of this character gives to the same passage. But not only do different editions of this book vary as to insertion and rejection of words: they also differ as to the mode of writing many of those actually employed. Words written in similar manners, or of similar sound, but with widely different significations, frequently replace one another; and not unfrequently characters totally different in sound, appearance, and meaning are found substituted one for another in the same passage. Hence the number of various readings is exceedingly great, and the meaning of many passages at least very doubtful. One edition gives in the introduction an account of some of the variations in the text, which occupies a considerable number of pages; while another edition gives only a text accompanied by various readings. The next point to be considered, is the style of our author. This is perhaps the most terse and concise ever employed. There is little, if any, grace or elegance about it: and most of the chapters seem to be merely notes or texts for philosophical discourses. They are composed of short and often enigmatical or paradoxical sentences—not in verse, as has been asserted[9]—and with a connexion either very slight or not at all perceptible. Much of the present obscurity may be due to the antiquity of the language and the uncertainty about the proper reading; but much is also due to the brief enigmatical manner in which the author has expressed himself. Many Chinese regard the style as profound and suggestive, and so, no doubt, it is; but we can never get at the bottom of the meaning, nor imagine all that is suggested.