ight have lived later than Chwangtse, and taken his nom de plume
of Liehtse from the latter's book; but against this there is the
fact that Liehtse's teaching forms a natural link between
Chtangtse's and that of their common Master Laotse; and above
all--and herein lies the real importance of him--the real Liehtse
treats Confucius as a Teacher and Man of Tao. But by Chwangtse's
time the two schools had separated: Confucius was Chwangtse's
butt;--we shall see why. And in the scum of Liehtse he is
made fun of in Chwangtse's spirit, but without Changtse's wit
and style.

------
* Whose translation of parts of the _Book of Liehtse,_ with an
invaluable preface, appears in the _Wisdom of the East Series;_
from which translation the passages quoted in this lecture are
taken;--as also are many ideas from the preface.
------

So that whoever wrote this book,--whether it was the man referred
to by Chwangtse when he says: "There was Liehtse again; he could
ride upon the wind and go wheresoever he wished, staying away as
long as thirteen days,"--or someone else of the same name, he did
not take his non de plume from that passage in Chwangtse, because
he was probably dead when Chwangtse wrote it. We may, then,
safely call him a Taoist Teacher of the fifth century,--or at
latest of the early fourth.

The book's own account of itself is, that it was not written by
Liehtse, but compiled from his oral teaching by his disciples.
Thus it begins:

"Our Master Liehtse live in the Cheng State for forty years, and
no man knew him for what he was. The prince, his ministers, and
the state officials looked upon him as one of the common herd. A
time of dearth fell upon the state, and he was preparing to
emigrate to Wei, when his disciples said to him: 'Now that our
Master is going away without any prospect of returning, we have
ventured to approach him, hoping for instruction. Are there no
words from the lips of Hu-Ch'iu Tsu-lin that you can impart to
us?'--Lieh the Master smiled and said: 'Do you suppose that Hu
Tzu dealt in words? However, I will try to repeat to you what my
Teacher said on one occasion to Po-hun Moujen. I was standing by
and heard his words, which ran as follows.'"

Then come some rather severe metaphysics on cosmogony: really, a
more systematic statement of the teaching thereon which Laotse
referred to, but did not (in the _Tao Teh King_) define. 'More
systematic,'--and yet by no means are the lines lai