Further, Lao-tzŭ represents pure or abstract existence as identical with non-existence, and in our own century Hegel has said that Being and Non-being are the same.[36] Again, Lao-tzŭ speaks of the ultimate existence as that out of which all other existences have proceeded, and he regards it as becoming active and producing from having been inactive and quiescent. So many modern philosophers have maintained that God made all things out of himself; and in the opinion of some the Deity became personal from being impersonal, and the Infinite manifested itself as finite in the created universe.[37] But the great point on which Lao-tzŭ differs from the large majority of modern thinkers with regard to the First Cause is that he never introduces or supposes the element of personality; consequently will and design are excluded from his conception of the primordial existence.[38] Here, I think, he is logically more correct than the modern philosopher referred to above, although his notions may be much farther from the actual truth than theirs. Again, when Lao-tzŭ speaks of Nature (Tao) as the source whence all things spring—as that which informs and cherishes all the world—and as that into which all living creatures, high and low, finally return—he says what many others have expressed in terms often very similar. I select only two or three instances by way of illustration. The Pythagorean doctrine is thus put by Virgil— —“deum (i.e. animum) ire per omnes Terrasque tractusque maris cælumque profundum. Hinc pecudes, armenta, viros, genus omne ferarum, Quemque sibi tenues nascentem arcessere vitas; Scilicet huc reddi deinde ac resoluta referri Omnia.”[39] Strikingly similar to Lao-tzŭ’s words are those of the Preacher—“For that which befalleth the sons of men befalleth beasts; even one thing befalleth them; as the one dieth, so dieth the other; yea, they have all one breath; so that a man hath no pre-eminence above a beast; for all is vanity. All go unto one place; all are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.”[40] In later times Coleridge has said—“Life is the one universal soul, which by virtue of the enlivening Breath, and the informing word, all organised bodies have in common, each after its kind. This, therefore, all animals possess, and man as an animal.”[41] More closely resembling Lao-tzŭ’s statements on this subject, however, are the words of Dr. Büchner—“D’un autre côté n’oublions pas non plus, que nous ne sommes qu’une partie imperceptible, quoique nécessaire, du grand tout qui constitue le monde et que nous devons tôt ou tard perdu notu personalité pour rentrer dans la masse commune. La Matière dans son ensemble est la mère d’ou tout provient et ou tout retourne.”[42]