There there [sic] were hereditary ministerial families, who were continually encroaching on the authority of their rulers, and the heads of those families again were frequently hard pressed by their inferior officers. Such was the state of China in Confucius's time. The reader must have it clearly before him, if he would understand the position of the sage, and the reforms which, we shall find, it was subsequently his object to introduce. Arrived at Chau, he had no intercourse with the court or any of 1 See 左氏傳, 昭公七年. 2 何忌. 3 孟懿子. 4 南宮敬叔. 5 The 家語 makes Chang-shu accompany Confucius to Chau. It is difficult to understand this, if Chang-shu were really a son of Mang Hsi who had died that year. 6 洛. 7 敬王 (B.C. 519-475) the principal ministers. He was there not as a politician, but as an inquirer about the ceremonies and maxims of the founders of the existing dynasty. Lao Tan [1], whom he had wished to see, generally acknowledged as the founder of the Taoists, or Rationalistic sect (so called), which has maintained its ground in opposition to the followers of Confucius, was then a curator of the royal library. They met and freely interchanged their views, but no reliable account of their conversations has been preserved. In the fifth Book of the Li Chi, which is headed 'The philosopher Tsang asked,' Confucius refers four times to the views of Lao-tsze on certain points of funeral ceremonies, and in the 'Narratives of the School,' Book XXIV, he tells Chi K'ang what he had heard from him about 'The Five Tis,' but we may hope their conversation turned also on more important subjects. Sze-ma Ch'ien, favourable to Lao-tsze, makes him lecture his visitor in the following style:-- 'Those whom you talk about are dead, and their bones are moldered to dust; only their words remain. When the superior man gets his time, he mounts aloft; but when the time is against him, he moves as if his feet were entangled. I have heard that a good merchant, though he has rich treasures deeply stored, appears as if he were poor, and that the superior man whose virtue is complete, is yet to outward seeming stupid. Put away your proud air and many desires, your insinuating habit and wild will [2]. These are of no advantage to you. This is all which I have to tell you.' On the other hand, Confucius is made to say to his disciples, 'I know how birds can fly, how fishes can swim, and how animals can run. But the runner may be snared, the swimmer may be hooked, and the flyer may be shot by the arrow. But there is the dragon. I cannot tell how he mounts on the wind through the clouds, and rises to heaven. Today I have seen Lao-tsze, and can only compare him to the dragon [3].' While at Lo, Confucius walked over the grounds set apart for the great sacrifices to Heaven and Earth; inspected the pattern of the Hall of Light, built to give audience in to the princes of the kingdom; and examined all the arrangements of the ancestral temple and the court.