Perhaps the closest approach in the past to the movement of which Rousseau is the most important single figure is the early Taoist movement in China. Taoism, especially in its popular aspects, became later something very different, and what I say is meant to apply above all to the period from about 550 to 200 B.C. The material for the Taoism of this period will be found in convenient form in the volume of Léon Wieger (1913)--_Les Pères du Système taoïste_ (Chinese texts with French translations of Lao-tzŭ, Lieh-tzŭ and Chuang-tzŭ). The Tao Tê King of Lao-tzŭ is a somewhat enigmatical document of only a few thousand words, but plainly primitivistic in its general trend. The phrase that best sums up its general spirit is that of Wordsworth--a “wise passiveness.” The unity at which it aims is clearly of the pantheistic variety, the unity that is obtained by breaking down discrimination and affirming the “identity of contradictories,” and that encourages a reversion to origins, to the state of nature and the simple life. According to the Taoist the Chinese fell from the simple life into artificiality about the time of the legendary Yellow Emperor, Hoang-ti (27th century B.C.). The individual also should look back to beginnings and seek to be once more like the new-born child[322] or, according to Chuang-tzŭ, like the new-born calf.[323] It is in Chuang-tzŭ indeed that the doctrine develops its full naturalistic and primitivistic implications. Few writers in either East or West have set forth more entertainingly what one may term the Bohemian attitude towards life. He heaps ridicule upon Confucius and in the name of spontaneity attacks his doctrine of humanistic imitation.[324] He sings the praises of the unconscious,[325] even when obtained through intoxication,[326] and extols the morality of the beautiful soul.[327] He traces the fall of mankind from nature into artifice in a fashion that anticipates very completely both Rousseau’s Discourse on the Arts and Sciences[328] and that on the Origin of Inequality.[329] See also the amusing passage in which the brigand Chi, child of nature and champion of the weak against the oppressions of government, paints a highly Rousseauistic picture of man’s fall from his primitive felicity.[330] Among the things that are contrary to nature and purely conventional, according to Chuang-tzŭ and the Taoists, are, not only the sciences and arts and attempts to discriminate between good and bad taste,[331] but likewise government and statecraft,[332] virtue and moral standards.[333] To the artificial music of the Confucians, the Taoists oppose a natural music that offers startling analogies to the most recent programmatic and descriptive tendencies of Occidental music.[334] See especially Chuang-tzŭ’s programme for a cosmic symphony in three movements[335]--the _Pipes of Pan_ as one is tempted to call it. This music that is supposed to reflect in all its mystery and