It is perhaps more necessary to lay emphasis on the value of pure Taoism as an ethical system than on that of the Confucian code, for one is apt--especially if one lives among the Chinese--to condemn Taoism almost unheard on account of the gross superstitions that characterise it at the present day. Popular Taoism is and for many centuries has been a compound of jugglery and fraud, of pseudo-religion and pseudo-philosophy. With all this Lao Tzŭ had nothing to do. That great man and his brilliant successor Chuang Tzŭ--who has been styled the St. Paul of Taoism--founded their theory of life and conduct on a mysterious entity called _Tao_, a word which has been variously translated Reason, Realisation, the Norm, the Word (λόγος), the Way, the First Cause, Nature, the Idea of the Good (in the Platonic sense), the Creative Principle, Truth, the Metaphysical Absolute, Virtue, Wisdom, God. This is no place for a discussion of the philosophical principles of pure Taoism, which has no visible existence among the farmers of Weihaiwei. All that need be said here is that to understand Tao and to regulate one's life according to Tao was to be a _chên-jên_, a true man, a Taoist. As time went on Taoism became ninety-nine parts "ism" to one part Tao: it dabbled in alchemy, fortune-telling and astrology, and its votaries (who included several Chinese emperors) gave themselves up to a search for the elixir of immortality and the elusive secret of the transmutation of metals. The torch of a lofty philosophy passed into the hands of men who, instead of using the light to aid them in the search for the sublime _Tao_, soon quenched it in the stagnant waters of witchcraft and demonology. Some writers seem to have assumed that Lao Tzŭ, in spite of the acknowledged fact of his intellectual and moral greatness, was in some mysterious way the unwitting cause of the later corruptions: but, as has been said, a clear distinction must be drawn between popular Taoism (which has little or nothing to say of _Tao_) and the philosophic Taoism which has made a noble and permanent contribution to the ethical consciousness of the Chinese people.[342] Popular Taoism probably existed, in some form or other, long before the time of the compiler of the _Tao Tê Ching_. The astrology and alchemy and demonology that give the former many of its characteristic features may have existed in China from a very remote age. The extreme antiquity of superstitions of this kind in other parts of Asia is an undeniable fact: the records of the early civilisation of Chaldæa give us statements concerning the sorcerers and astrologers of that country that might be applied almost without alteration to the charm-mongerers and adepts of Chinese Taoism.[343] The philosophy of Lao Tzŭ may be compared with a pure sparkling stream that bubbled up amid the crags of a lofty range of mountains; when it had flowed down the hillside and began to meander through the fields and villages below, its limpid