In the next and lower stage life was still virtuous, though occasionally sliding into vice, and unable to maintain the stability of unconscious and unforced excellence.[3] Then came the time when humanity and equity appeared, and when filial piety and integrity made themselves known.[4] These were degenerate days when man was no more “Nature’s priest” and when the “vision splendid” had almost ceased to attend him. Finally came the days when craft and cunning were developed, and when insincerity arose. Propriety and carefulness of external deportment also, according to Lao-tzŭ, indicated a great falling away from primitive simplicity the beginning of trouble; and he, accordingly, speaks of them rather slightingly. This is a point on which Confucius seems to have been of a very different opinion, although he had studied the ceremonial code under Lao-tzŭ. Such is, according to the Tao-tê Ching, the mode in which the world gradually became what it is at present. The book does not contain any express statement of opinion as to whether each human creature is born with a good or a bad nature. From various passages in it, however, we are authorised in inferring that Lao-tzŭ regarded an infant as good by nature. Its spirit comes pure and perfect from the Great Mother, but susceptible to all the evil influences which operate upon it and lead it astray. The standard of virtue to which Lao-tzŭ refers is Nature (Tao), just as another old philosopher says, “in hoc sumus sapientes, quod naturam optimam ducem, tanquam deum, sequimur eique paremus.”[5] By our philosopher, however, Nature is not regarded as personified and deified, but is contemplated as the eternal, spontaneous, and emanatory cause. The manifestation of complete virtue comes from Nature only.[6] This is the guide and model of the universe, and it itself has spontaneity as guide, that is, it has no guide whatever. All creatures and man among them, must conform to it or they miss the end of their existence and soon cease to be. As Tao, however, is very indefinite and intangible, Lao-tzŭ holds it out to mortals as their guide chiefly through the medium of certain other ideas more easily comprehended. Thus Heaven, corresponding somewhat to our notions of providence, imitates Nature, and becomes to man its visible embodiment.[7] In its perfect impartiality, its noiseless working, its disinterested and unceasing well-doing, it presents a rule by which man should regulate his life.[8] Not less are the material heavens above him a model in their unerring, and spontaneous obedience to Nature, and in their eternal purity. The Earth[9] also, with her calm eternal repose, and the great rivers and seas, are types of the far-off olden times, whose boundless merit raised them to the height of fellow-workers with Nature, and to whom all things once paid a willing homage, are patterns for all after ages.[10]