at the time:
more of their quaint punchinello _chinoiserie,_ you say. Three
weeks after, you find that it was a clear voice from the
supermundane, a high revelation. The Chinese poet saunters along
playing a common little tune on his Pan-pipes. Singing robes?--
None in the world; just what he goes to work in. Grand Manner?--
'Sir,' says he, 'the contemptible present singer never heard of
it; wait for that till the coming of a Superior Man.'--'Well,'
you say, 'at least there is no danger of _pombundle';_ and
indeed there is not. But you rather like the little tune, and
stop to listen . . . and then . . . Oh God! the Wonder of wonders
has happened, and the Universe will never be quite the dull,
fool, ditchwater thing it was to you before . . .

Liehtse gives one rather that kind of feeling. We know
practically nothing about him.--I count three stages of growth
among the sinologists: the first, with a missionary bias; the
second, with only the natural bias of pure scholarship and
critical intellectualism, broad and generous, but rather running
at times towards tidying up the things of the Soul from off the
face of the earth; the third, with scholarship plus sympathy,
understanding, and a dash of mystical insight. The men of the
first stage accepted Liehtse as a real person, and called him a
degenerator of Taoism, a teacher of immoral doctrine;--in the
_Book of Liehtse,_ certainly, such doctrine is to be found. The
men of the second stage effectually tidied Liehtse up: Dr. H. A.
Giles says he was an invention of the fertile brain of Chwangtse,
and his book a forgery of Han times. Well; people did forge
ancient literature in those days, and were well paid for doing
so; and you cannot be quite certain of the complete authenticity
of any book purporting to have been written before Ts'in Shi
Hwangti's time. Also Chwangtse's brain was fertile enough for
anything;--so that there was much excuse for the men of the
second stage. But then came Dr. Lionel Giles* who belongs to the
third stage, and perhaps _is_ the third stage. He shows that
though there is in the _Book of Liehtse_ a residue or scum of
immoral teaching, it is quite in opposition to the tendency of
the teaching that remains when this scum is removed; and deduces
from this fact the sensible idea that the scum was a later
forgery; the rest, the authentic work of a true philosopher with
an original mind and a style of his own. Such a man, of course,
m