[29] See Chs. 16, 55. [30] _The Lotos Eaters_. [31] See Chs. 8, 78. [32] See Chs. 1, 47. [33] Timæus, ch. xviii. (Ed. Stallbaum). See also Grote’s Plato, Vol. iii., p. 266–7. Timæus, however, introduces reason and other ideas not consonant with Lao-tzŭ’s teachings. [34] Geschichte, &c., vol. i, p. 204. [35] Robert Lytton’s—“The Man of Science.” [36] See Lewesʼ History of Philosophy, vol. ii., p. 533 (New Edition). [37] On this subject information will be found in E. Laisset’s Précurseurs et Disciples de Descartes, p. 210, &c.; Hamilton’s Discussions; Lewisʼ History of Philosophy, vol. ii. [38] Fichte (the elder), however, is at one with Lao-tzŭ on this point. [39] Georgica. Bk. iv., vs. 221–6. The rest of the passage does not apply. Compare also Cicero’s criticism on the Pythagorean doctrine, in the De Nat. Deorum, ch. 1, §11. [40] Eccles., Ch. iii., vs. 19 and 20. [41] Aids to Reflection, p. 4. [42] Force et Matière, p. 93 (French translation). [43] Biographia Lita., ch. 5; compare also the remarkable words of Hegel. Geschichte, &c., Vol. i., p. 143. CHAPTER VI. POLITICS. We now breathe a freer air—escaped from the trammels of Physics, and at large in the wide spaces of Politics. Here Lao-tzŭ speaks more plainly and fully, and it is easily seen that he is dealing with congenial subjects. To us also his political aphorisms will come with more freshness and delight than the speculations about things much more beyond his ken with which we were last engaged. Yet we must not expect to find in the _Tao-tê Ching_ a treatise on Politics, or a discourse on the best form of government. Lao-tzŭ does not present to us a wax figment of his own imagination—an ideal republic, an Utopia, or a New Atlantis. He looks to his own country as it was then, oppressed and miserable, and he endeavours to recall those in authority to a noble and generous mode of government. His standard of political excellence may be ideal, and some of his maxims may be fanciful, and even bad; still we will find in all a genial human philosophy, which even we of the enlightened nineteenth century cannot utterly despise.