In their views about death, also, our two sages seem to have been much alike. They do not refer to a state of existence hereafter, and they seem to have regarded the grave as the end of man, so far as his consciousness of being was concerned, at least. On this subject, however, we must speak with caution as the utterances of both are few and dark. A few general observations will now conclude these rather disjointed remarks about the points of similarity in the Tao-tê Ching and the Confucian classics. The Chung-yung, or Constant Mean, called by Dr. Legge the Doctrine of the Mean, amplifies and illustrates several of Lao-tzŭ’s teachings, and every reader of the book must have observed the frequency of the occurrence of the word Tao in it. The expression Chung-yung is, indeed, sometimes almost convertible with this word, and Confucius speaks of _keeping_ it in terms very similar to those which Lao-tzŭ uses about Tao. Again, the Li (禮) of the Li-chi, Lun-yü, and other works is a word of far wider and deeper signification than our translations usually represent. It seems often to indicate the carrying out of the theoretical Tao into practical life.[40] Several passages in the classic, named from the word, might be cited in support of the above view, and in one remarkable sentence, Confucius says that Li must have had its origin in the “Great One.”[41] The Shu-ching, or Classic of historical excerpts, contains, as has been seen, many doctrines and sayings similar to those of the Tao-tê Ching, and a similar remark applies to the Yi-Ching, especially to its appendix. The collection of early moral and immoral ballads usually dignified by the title Shi-ching or Classic of poetry, as might have been expected, does not throw much light on the influence exercised by Lao-tzŭ over Confucius or the similarity of their teachings, and the same is true of the Chʽun-chʽiu (春秋) or Annals of his Dynasty by Confucius. Descending to Mencius we find in the sayings recorded of him many doctrines very like some of Lao-tzŭ’s, and it is a remarkable fact that he never refers to the latter either in praise or in dispraise. Later Confucianists have regarded their Master as a born sage, and they would generally scout the idea that he was under serious obligations to any one, and to Lao-tzŭ in particular.