You can hear Laotse in them; it is the practical application of Laotse's doctrine. But can you not equally hear the voice of Confucius: "too far is not better than not far enough"? Western ethical teaching has tended towards inculcating imitation of the soul's action: this Chinese teaching takes the Soul for granted; says very little about it; but shows you how to provide the soul with the conditions through and in which it may act. "Love your enemies;"--yes; that is fine; it is what the Soul, the Divine Part of us, does;--but we are not in the least likely to do it while suffering from the reaction from an outburst of emotion; ethics grow rather meaningless to us when, for example, we have toppled over from our balance into pleasure, eaten not wisely but too well, say; and then toppled back into the dumps with an indigestion. But where the balance is kept you need few ethical injunctions; the soul is there, and may speak; and sees to all that. Hu-Chiu Tzu-lin, we read, taught Liehtse these things. Said he: "You must familiarize yourself with the Theory of Consequents before you can talk of regulating conduct." Liehtse said:--"Will you explain what you mean by the Theory of Consequents?" "Look at your shadow," said his teacher; "and you will know." Liehtse turned his head and looked at his shadow. When his body was bent the shadow was crooked; when upright, it was straight. Thus it appeared that the attributes of straightness and crookedness were not inherent in the shadow, but corresponded to certain positions in the body . . . . "Holding this Theory of Consequents," says Liehtse, "is to be at home in the antecedent." Now the antecedent of the personality is the Soul; the antecedent of the action is the motive; the antecedent of the conduct of life is the relation in which the component faculties of our being stand to each other and to the Soul. If the body is straight, so is the shadow; if the inner harmony or balance is attained and held to--well; you see the point. "The relative agrees with its antecedent," say the grammar books, very wisely. It is karma again: the effect flowing from the cause. "You may consider the virtues of Shennung and Yuyen," says Liehtse; "you may examine the books of Yu, Kia, Shang, and Chow,"--that is, the whole of history;--"you may weight the utterances of the great Teachers and Sages; but you will find no instance of preservation or destruction, fulness or decay, which has not obeyed this supreme Law of Causality."