It is not unusual for foreigners no less than for Chinese to speak of Lao-tzŭ and Confucius as having lived on very bad terms with each other and as having been diametrically opposite in their teachings. One Chinese scholar who ought to have known much better sins very badly in this respect. The excellent little book of Mr. Edkins on the Religious Condition of the Chinese contains the following: “Contemporary with Confucius, there was an old man afterwards known as Laou-tsoo, who meditated in a philosophic mood upon the more profound necessities and capacities of the human soul. He did so in a way that Confucius, the prophet of the practical, could not well comprehend. He conversed with him once, but never repeated his visit, for he could not understand him. Laou-tsoo recommended quiet reflection. Water that is still is also clear, and you may see deeply into it. Noise and passion are fatal to spiritual progress. The stars are invisible through a clouded sky. Nourish the perceptive powers of the soul in purity and rest.”[1] Others have expressed a similar opinion and with no more accuracy. This view, however, is not strictly correct. As has been seen, Confucius was a disciple of Lao-tzŭ, and there is no evidence to prove that any other than friendly relations existed between them. A Confucianist philosopher has somewhere remarked that Confucius and Lao-tzŭ were not the authors of opposite systems and founders of rival schools of philosophy, and the observation is quite correct. It was not until long after the two sages were dead that the followers of the one came to look on those of the other as heretics and enemies. Not only, however, did Confucius himself live in friendship with his instructor, so far as we know, but he also imbibed not a few of his tenets. The influence of Lao-tzŭ on his disciple, and the amount of similarity between the doctrines of the two are subjects well deserving a serious study. That they differ widely on many points is a fact known to everybody, but few, so far as my knowledge extends, have studied the affinities between them. To a thorough-going Confucianist the mere idea of doing such a a thing is horrible, and the Temple of Literature closed against the reception of the tablets of the rare individuals who have essayed the task, deters the after generations. By one, however, not anxious about his posthumous tablet, and who takes pleasure in finding how near the divergent lines of orthodoxy and heterodoxy may be found to have originally converged, the work may be attempted without any misgivings. The present writer can do nothing more than merely try to sketch a few of the features of resemblance between the teachings of the two sages in speculative Physics, Politics and Ethics, following the division adopted above.