r year, he built up this picture, gave the world
this wonderful assurance of a man? In his omissions, no less
than in his fulfilments. He taught,--so far as we know,--nothing
but what the common mind might easily accept; nothing to miss
the mark of the intelligence of dull Li or Ching toiling in the
rice-field;--nor yet too paltry for the notice of the Hwangti on
the Dragon Throne. Laotse had come in the spirit of Plenydd the
Light-bringer; in the spirit of Alawn, to raise up presently
sweet profusions of song. He illuminated the inner worlds; his
was the urge that should again and again, especially later when
reinforced by Buddhism, prick up the Black-haired People to
heights of insight and spiritual achievement.--But the cycles of
insight and spiritual achievement, these too, must always run
their course and fall away; there is no year when it is always
Spring. Dark moments and seasons come; and the Spirit becomes
hidden; and what you need most is not illumination,--which you
cannot get; or if you could, it would be hell, and not heaven,
that would be illuminated for you; not a spur to action,--for as
things are constituted, any spur at such a time would drive you
to wrong and exorbitant action:--what you need is not these, but
simply stability to hold on; simply the habit of propriety, the
power to go on at least following harmless conventions and doing
harmless things; not striking out new lines for yourself, which
would certainly be wrong lines, but following as placidly as may
be lines that were laid down for you, or that you yourself laid
down, in more righteous and more luminous times. A strong
government, however tyrannical, is better than an anarchy in
which the fiend in every man is let loose to run amuck. Under
the tyranny, yes, the aspiring man will find himself hindered and
thwarted; but under the anarchy, since man is no less hell than
heaven, the gates of hell will be opened, and the Soul, normally
speaking, can only retire and wait for better times:--unless it
be the Soul of a Confucius, it can but wait till Karma with
ruthless hands has put down the anarchy and cleared things up.
Unless it be the Soul of a Confucius; and even Such a One is
bound to be a failure in his own day.

But see what he did. The gates of hell were swung wide, and for
the time being, not the hosts of the Seraphim and Cherubim,--not
the armed Bodhisatvas and Dhyanis,--could have forced them back
on their hinges: "the r