Taoism and Confucianism

Taoïsme et Confucianisme, August-September 1932.

Ancient peoples, for the most part, have done little to establish a rigorous chronology of their history; some even used, at least in the most remote epochs, only symbolic numbers which one could not, without commit- ting a grave error, take as dates in the ordinary and literal sense of the word. In this respect, the Chinese are a rather remarkable exception: they are perhaps the only people who have constantly taken care to date their annals by means of precise astronomical observations since the very be- ginning of their tradition, including the description of the state of the sky at the moment when they occurred, events whose memory has been pre- served. Due to this, we can, in the case of China and its ancient history, be more affirmative than in many other cases; it is well known that the origin of this tradition which can properly be called Chinese dates back 3,700 years before the Hebraic age; but for the latter, it is difficult in re- ality to say what event this starting point relates to. Such an origin, so remote as it may seem when compared to that of the Greco-Roman civilization and the dates of so-called 'classical' antiq- uity is, to tell the truth, still quite recent; what was the state of the yellow race before this time, which then presumably inhabited parts of Central Asia? It is impossible to be precise in the absence of sufficiently explicit data; it seems that this race has gone through a period of obscurity, of indefinite duration, and that it was drawn from sleep at a time which was marked by important changes for other parts of humanity. Therefore, it may be, and indeed it is the only thing which is affirmed quite clearly, that what appears as a beginning has really been nothing other than an awakening of a very ancient tradition, which must have existed in an- other form, to adapt to new conditions. Be that as it may, the history of China or what it is so called today, begins properly only Fu-hsi, who is regarded as its first emperor; it must be added at once that this name Fu- hsi, to which all knowledge which constitutes the very essence of the Chinese tradition is attached, is actually used to designate an entire pe- riod, which extends over a duration of several centuries. Fu-hsi, to determine the principles of the tradition, made use of linear symbols as simple and simultaneously synthetic as possible: the contin- uous line and the broken line, respective signs of yang and yin, which is to say of the two active and passive principles which, proceeding from a type of polarization of the supreme metaphysical unity, gives rise to the whole of the universal manifestation. Combinations of these two signs, in all their possible arrangements, form the eight koua or 'trigrams,' which have always remained the fundamental symbols of the Far-East-ern tradition. It is said that, “Before drawing the trigrams, Fu-hsi looked at Heaven, then looked down at Earth, observed its particularities and considered the character of the human body and of all external things."^[273] This text is particularly interesting in that it contains the formal expres-sion of the Great Triad: Heaven and Earth, or the two complementary principles from which all beings are produced, and man, who, by their nature being apart of both, is the middle term of the Triad, the mediator between Heaven and Earth. It should be pointed out that the 'true man,' that is, the one who, having attained the full development of the higher senses, "can help Heaven and Earth in the upkeep and transformation of beings, and by this very fact, constitute a third power with Heaven and Earth."^[274] It is also said that Fu-hsi saw a dragon emerging from the river, uniting in him the powers of Heaven and Earth, and bearing the trigrams inscribed on his back; this is just another way to symbolically express the same thing. The entire tradition was therefore first and foremost contained and germinated in the trigrams, symbols wonderfully suited to support in-definite possibilities: it remains only to extract all the necessary develop-ments, either in the field of pure metaphysical knowledge, or in that of its various applications to the cosmic order and the human order. For this reason, Fu-hsi wrote three books, the last of which, called I Ching or 'Book of Changes,' has reached us alone; and the text of this book is still so synthetic that it can be understood in multiple meanings, perfectly concordant among them, according to whether we stick strictly to the principles or we wish to apply them to such or such determined order. Thus, aside from the metaphysical meaning, there is a multitude of con-tingent applications, of unequal importance, which constitute as many traditional sciences: logical, mathematic, physiological, social applica-tions, and so on; there is even a divinatory application, which is also re-garded as one of the most inferior of all, and whose practice is abandoned to wandering jongleurs. Moreover, it is a characteristic common to all traditional doctrines to contain in themselves from the beginning, the possibilities of all conceivable developments, including those of an indef-inite variety of sciences, of which the modern West has no idea, and of all the adaptations that may be required by subsequent circumstances.

Therefore, it is not surprising that the teachings contained within the I Ching, which Fu-hsi himself claimed to have taken from a very ancient past and which were very difficult to determine, have in turn become the common basis of the two doctrines in which the Chinese tradition has continued to this day, and which, due to their totally different domains to which they relate, may seem at first glance to have no point of contact: Taoism and Confucianism. What are the circumstances which, following around three thousand years, necessitated a re-adaptation of the traditional doctrine, which is to say an altered support, not on the substance which always remains strictly identical to itself, but on the forms in which this doctrine is somehow incorporated? Again, this is a point which would no doubt be difficult to fully elucidate, for these things, in China as well as elsewhere, are among those which leave little trace in written history, where the external effects are much more apparent than the root causes. In any case, what seems certain is that the doctrine, as it was formulated at the time of Fu-hsi, had ceased to be generally understood in what is most essential; no doubt, the applications which had been extracted from it formerly, in particular from the social point of view, did not correspond any more to the conditions of existence of the race, which had to change very appreciably in the interval. It was then in the sixth century B.C.; it is to be remarked that in this century there have been considerable changes in almost all peoples, so that what happened in China then seems to be related to a cause, which is perhaps difficult to define, whose action affected all terrestrial humanity. What is odd is that this sixth century can be considered, in a very general manner, as the beginning of the proper 'historic' period: when one wishes to go further, it is impossible to establish an even approximate chronology except in some exceptional cases, which is precisely the case with China; on the contrary, from this period the dates of events are known everywhere with great accuracy; assuredly, this is a fact that deserves some thoughts. The changes that take place are then presented different according to the characters of the country: for example, in India Buddhism was born, which is to say, a revolt against the traditional spirit, the negation of all authority to a veritable anarchy in the intellectual order and the social order; on the other hand, in China it is strictly in line with tradition that the two new doctrinal forms were simultaneously constituted, to which the names Taoism and Confucianism are given. The founders of these two doctrines, Lao-tzu and K'ungtzu, whom the Westerners called Confucius, were therefore contemporary, and history tells us that they met one day. “Have you discovered Tao?,” Lao-tzu asked. “I have sought it for twenty-seven years,” replied K'ung-tzu, “and I have not found it.” Thereupon, Lao-tzu confined himself to giving his party these few counsels: “The sage loves darkness; he does not give him- self up to all comers; he studies times and circumstances. If the moment is suitable, he speaks; otherwise, he is silent. Whoever has a treasure does not show it to everyone; thus, one who is truly wise does not reveal wis- dom to everyone. This is all I have to tell you; make the most of it." K'ung-tzu, returning from this meeting, said: “I saw Lao-tzu; he resem- bles the dragon. As for the dragon, I know not how it can be carried by winds and clouds and rise to Heaven."

This anecdote, reported by the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien, perfectly de- fines the respective positions of the two doctrines, rather we should say of the two branches of doctrine in which the Far Eastern tradition would now be divided: one with essentially pure metaphysics, to which all the traditional sciences having a speculative or, to put it better, 'cognitive' scope are added; the other confined to the practical field and standing exclusively in the field of social applications. K’ung-tzu himself admitted that he was not “born in Knowledge," which is to say, he had not reached the knowledge par excellence, which is that of the metaphysical and su- pra-rational order; he knew the traditional symbols, but he had not pen- etrated their deepest meaning. This is why his work must necessarily be limited to a special and contingent domain, which was his competence alone; but at least he was careful to not deny what was beyond him. In this, his more or less distant disciples did not always imitate him, and some, by a flaw that is widespread among 'specialists' of all kinds, some- times showed a narrow exclusivism which attracted to them some re- sponses of their scathing irony, from the great Taoist commentators of the fourth century B.C., the Lieh-tzu and above all Chuang-tzu. However, the discussions and quarrels that occurred at certain times should not make Taoism and Confucianism look like two rival schools, they never were, and they cannot be, since each has his own domain which are clearly distinct. Therefore, there is in their coexistence, nothing but per- fectly ordinary and regular, and in some respects their distinction corre- sponds quite exactly to, in other civilizations, are spiritual authority and temporal power.

Moreover, we have already said that the two doctrines have a com- mon root, which is the anterior tradition; K'ung-tzu, no more than Lao- tzu, has never intended to expose conceptions which would have been exclusively his own, and which, by the same token, would have been de- prived of all authority and any real significance. “I am,” said K'ung-tzu, “a man who loved the elders and who has made every effort to acquire their knowledge;”^[275] this attitude, which is the opposite of the individu-alism of modern Westerners and their claim to 'originality' at any price, is the only one that is compatible with the constitution of a traditional civilization. The word 're-adaptation,' which we used previously, is therefore the correct one here; and the resulting social institutions are endowed with a remarkable stability, having lasted for twenty-five cen-turies and have survived all the periods of troubles that China has expe-rienced so far. We do not wish to dwell on these institutions, moreover, which are quite well known in their broad outlines; we will only recall that their essential trait is to take as a basis the family, and to extend from there to the race, which is the set of families attached to the same original stock; indeed, one of the characteristics of Chinese civilization is to be based on the idea of race and solidarity uniting its members with each other, while other civilizations, which generally include men be-longing to diverse or poorly defined races, are based on principles of unity which is quite different from this one. Ordinarily in the West when one speaks of China and its doctrines, one thinks almost exclusively of Confucianism, which, does not mean that one interprets it always correctly; it is sometimes claimed to be a kind of Eastern 'positivism,' whereas it is something else in reality, firstly because of its traditional character, and also because, as we have said, it is an application of higher principles, while positivism implies, on the contrary, the negation of such principles. As for Taoism, it is generally passed over in silence, and many seem to ignore its existence, or at least believe that it has long since disappeared and that it is of only historical or archaeological interest; we will see the reason for this mistake later. Lao-tzu wrote only a single treatise, concisely, the Tao-te-Ching, or the 'Book of the Way and Rectitude;' all other Taoist texts are either commentaries of this fundamental book or more or less later writings of some complementary teaching which firstly had been purely oral. Tao, literally translated as 'Way,' and which gave its name to the doctrine itself, is the Supreme Principle, viewed strictly from a metaphysical point of view: it is the origin and the end of all beings at once, as is clearly indicated by the idiographic character which represents it. Te, which we prefer to render as ‘Rectitude' rather than ‘Virtue' as is sometimes done, in order not to appear to give it a 'moral' meaning which is not in the spirit of Taoism, Te, we say, is what we could call a ‘specification' of the Tao with respect to a specific being, such as the human being for exam-ple: it is the direction that this being must follow so that his existence, in the state in which he is currently, is according to the Way, or in other words, in conformity with the Principle. Lao-tzu therefore places himself first in the universal order, and then descends down to an application; but this application, although properly aimed at the case of man, is by no means made from a social or moral point of view; what is envisaged is always and exclusively the attachment to the Supreme Principle, and so, in reality, we do not exit from the metaphysic domain. Thus it is not external action that Taoism accords importance; in sum, it holds it indifferent to itself, and it expressly teaches the doctrine of 'non-action,' which Westerners in general have little difficulty in under- standing the true meaning, although they may be helped by the theory of the Aristotelian 'prime mover,' whose meaning is the same in sub- stance, but they do not seem to have ever developed the consequences. 'Non-action' is not inertia, on the contrary, it is the fullness of activity, but it is a transcendent and entirely interior activity, unmanifest, in un- ion with the Principle, therefore beyond all distinctions and appearances that the vulgar wrongly take for reality itself, whereas they are only a more or less distant reflection of it. Moreover, it is to be remarked that Confucianism itself, whose point of view is that of action, nevertheless speaks of the 'invariable middle,' which is, of a state of perfect balance, subtracted from the incessant vicissitudes of the exterior world; but, for it, this can only be the expression of a purely theoretical ideal, and he can at most, in his contingent domain, grasp only a mere image of the true 'non-action,' while for Taoism it is a question of something com- pletely different, a fully effective realization of this transcendent state. Placed within the center of the cosmic wheel, the perfect sage moves in- visibly, by its mere presence, without participating in its movement, and without having to worry about exerting any action; his absolute detach- ment makes him master of all things, because he can no longer be af- fected by anything. “He has reached perfect impassability; life and death being equally indifferent to him, the collapse of the universe would not cause him any emotion. By scrutinizing, he has arrived at the immutable truth, the knowledge of the unique Universal Principal. He lets beings evolve according to their destinies, and he stands at the immobile center of all destinies... The external sign of this inner state is imperturbability; not that of the brave man who, alone for the sake of glory, approaches an army arrayed in battle; but that of the spirit which, superior to heaven, to heaven, to all beings, dwells in a body to which it is not held, does not care about the images that its sense prove it, knows everything by a global knowledge in its immobile unity. This spirit, absolutely independ- ent, is the master of men; if it pleased him to summon them en masse, on the appointed day they would all come running; but he does not wish to be served.”^[276] “If a true sage had, in spite of himself, taken charge of the empire, remaining in non-action, he would use the leisure of his non-intervention to give free rein to natural propensities. The empire would be well off having been handed over to this man. Without putting his organs into play, without using his bodily senses, sitting motionless, he would see everything from his transcendent eye; absorbed in contempla-tion, he would shake everything just as thunder does; the physical heaven would move meekly to the movements of his mind; all beings would follow the impulse of his non-intervention, as dust follows the wind. Why would this man manipulate the empire, when letting go is sufficient?"^[277] We insist especially on this doctrine of ‘non-action;' aside from being one of the most important and characteristic aspects of Taoism, there are more special reasons for this, which the following will make clear. But a question arises: how can one reach the state that is described as that of the perfect sage? Here, as in all similar doctrines found in other civiliza-tions, the answer is very clear: it is achieved exclusively by knowledge; but this knowledge is the very knowledge that K'ung-tzu confessed to not having obtained, it is of quite a different order than ordinary or 'pro-fane' knowledge, it has no relation with the external knowledge of the 'letters,' nor, with science as understood by modern Westerners. This is not an incompatibility, although ordinary science, by the limits it estab-lishes and by the mental habits it makes, can often be an obstacle to the acquisition of true knowledge; but whoever possesses the latter must necessarily regard the relative and contingent speculations in which most men indulge as negligible, the analysis and detailed research in which they are embarrassed, and the inevitable consequences of the mul-tiple differences of opinion. “Philosophers are lost in their speculations, the sophists in their distinctions, the researchers in their investigations. All these men are captive within the limits of space, blinded by particular beings."^[278] The sage, on the contrary, has gone beyond all distinctions inherent in the external points of view; at the central point where he stands, all opposition has disappeared and resolved in perfect equilib-rium. "In the primordial state, these oppositions do not exist. All are de-rived from the diversification of beings, and their contacts caused by the universal gyration. They would cease if diversity and movement ceased. They immediately cease to affect the whole being who has reduced his distinct ego and his particular movement to almost nothing. This being no longer conflicts with any being, because he is established in the infi-nite, erase in the indefinite. He has arrived and stands at the starting point of transformations, the neutral point where there are no conflicts.

By concentrating his nature, by feeding his vital spirit, by gathering all his power, he has united with the principle of all genesis. His nature be- ing complete, his vital spirit being intact, no being can harm him.”^[279] It is for this reason, and not by any kind of skepticism, which of course excludes the degree of knowledge in which he has arrived, that the wise man stands entirely outside of the discussions which stir the common people; indeed, for him all contrary opinions are equally valueless, be- cause, by the very fact of their opposition, they are all equally relative. "His point of view is a point from where this and that, yes and no, still seem indistinguishable. This point is the pivot of the norm; it is the im- movable center of a circumference, on the contour of which rolls all con- tingencies, distinctions, and individualities; from which we see only an infinite, which is neither this nor that, neither yes nor no. To see every- thing in the primordial unity which is not yet differentiated, or of a dis- tance such that everything merges into one is the true intelligence... Let us not distinguish, but see everything within the unity of the norm. Let us not argue to win, but rather use with others the process of monkey trainers. This man says to the monkeys that he was raising: I will give you three taros in the morning, and four in the evening. The monkeys were all malcontent. So, he said, I'll give you four taros in the morning, and three in the evening. The monkeys were all content. With the ad- vantage of having satisfied them, this man finally gave them the seven taros which he had originally intended for them. And so does the sage; he says yes or no, for the sake of peace, and remains quiet in the center of the universal wheel, indifferent to the meaning in which it turns."^[280] It is scarcely necessary to say that the state of the perfect sage, with all that it implies and upon which we cannot insist here, cannot be at- tained with a single stroke, and even degrees lower than this one, and which are like so many preliminary stages, are accessible only at the cost of efforts of which very few men are capable. Moreover, the methods employed for this purpose by Taoism are particularly difficult to follow, and the assistance they provide is much smaller than that which can be found in the traditional teachings of other civilizations, India for exam- ple; in any case, they are practically impassable for men belonging to races other than that to which they are more particularly suited. Moreo- ver, even in China, Taoism has never been widely disseminated, nor has it ever aimed to, always refraining from propaganda; this reserve is im- posed by its very nature; it is an extremely closed and essentially 'initi- atic' doctrine, which as such is intended only for an elite, and which can- not be proposed to all indistinctly, for not all are capable of understand- ing it, and especially of 'realizing' it. It is said that Lao-tzu confided his teaching only to two disciples, who then trained ten others; following writing the Tao-te-ching, he disappeared to the West; no doubt he took refuge in some almost inaccessible retreat of Tibet or the Himalayas, and, as the historian Ssu-ma Ch'ien says, “we do not know where or how he ended his days." The doctrine which is common to all, the one that all, to the extent of their means, must study and put into practice is Confucianism, which embraces all that concerns social relations is fully sufficient for the needs of ordinary life. Yet, since Taoism represents the principal knowledge from which all the rest derives, Confucianism in reality is only an appli- cation of a contingent order, it is subordinated in law by its very nature; but this is something that the mass does not have to worry about, that it cannot even fathom, since only the practical application falls within their intellectual horizon; and, in the mass of which we speak, it is certainly necessary to understand the great majority of Confucian 'scholars' them- selves. This de facto separation between Taoism and Confucianism, be- tween the inner doctrine and the external doctrine constitutes, apart from any form of questioning, one of the most notable difference be- tween the civilization of China and that of India; in the latter, there is but one singly body of doctrine, Brahmanism, comprising both the principle and all its applications, and, from the lowest to the highest, there is no continuum, so to speak. This difference is largely due to the mental con- ditions of the two peoples; however, it is very probably that the continu- ity which has been maintained in India, and no doubt in India alone, has existed as long ago in China, from the time of Fu-his to that of Lao-tzu and K'ung-tzu. We now see why Taoism is so unknown to Westerners: it does not appear on the outside as Confucianism does, whose action is manifested visibly in all circumstances of social life; it is the exclusive prerogative of an elite, perhaps more restricted in number today than it has ever been, and which does not wish to communicate externally the doctrine of which it is the guardian; finally, its very point of view, its mode of ex- pression, and its mode of teachings are all that is foreign to the modern Western mind. While some know of the existence of Taoism and realiz- ing that this tradition is still alive, imagine that, because of its closed na- ture, its influence on the whole of Chinese civilization is practically neg- ligible, otherwise being absolutely null; again, this is a serious mistake, and it remains for us to explain, to the extent that is possible to do so here, what is true in this respect.

If we refer to the few texts we quoted above regarding 'non-action,' we can understand without too much difficulty, at least in principle if not in the modes of application, what the role of Taoism must be, the role of an invisible leadership, dominating the events instead of taking a di- rect part in them, and which, to not be clearly visible in external mo- ments, is only more profoundly effective. Taoism fulfills, as we have said, the function of the 'prime mover:' he does not seek to mingle with action, he is even entirely disinterested insofar as he sees in action only a tran- sient and momentary modification, a minute element of the 'current of forms,' a point of the circumference of the 'cosmic wheel;' on the other hand, it is like the pivot around which the wheel turns, the norm on which its movement is regulated, precisely because it does not participate in this movement, and without even having to expressly intervene in it. All that is involved in the revolutions of the wheel changes and passes; all that remains, being united to the Principle, invariably stands at the center, immutable as the very Principle; and the center, which nothing can affect in its undifferentiated unity, is the starting point of the indefi- nite multitude of modifications which constitute the universal manifes- tation.

It must be added at once that what we have just said concerning what is essentially the state and function of the perfect sage, since it is the latter who has actually reached the center, applies strictly only to the supreme degree of the Taoist hierarchy; the other degrees are such as the intermediaries between the center and the exterior world, and, as the spokes of the wheel leave its hub and connect to the circumference, they assure, without any discontinuity, the transmission of the influence em- anating from the invariable point where the 'non-acting activity' lies. The term influence, not action, is the correct term here; we could also say, if you will, that it is a 'action of presence;' and even the inferior degrees, though far removed from the fullness of ‘non-action,' still par- ticipate in some way. Moreover, the modes of communication of this in- fluence necessarily escape those who only see the outside of things; they would be just as unintelligible to the Western mind, and for the same reasons, as the methods which allow the accession to the varying degrees of hierarchy. It would be perfectly useless to insist on the so-called 'tem- ples without doors,' the 'colleges where we do not teach,' or on what could be the constitution of organizations which do not have the charac- ter of a 'society' in the European sense of the word, which have no defi- nite external form, and which sometimes do not even have a name, and yet creates between their members the most effective and indissoluble link that can exist; all this cannot represent anything to the Western im-agination, which is familiar with it, providing no valid term of compari-son here. At the most exterior level, there are, without a doubt, organizations which, being engaged in the field of action, seem easier to grasp although they are still far more secretive than all Western associations which have some more or less justified pretensions in possessing this character. These organizations usually only have a temporary existence; formed for a special purpose, they disappear without a trace as soon as their mission is accomplished; they are merely simple emanations from other deeper and more permanent organizations, from which they receive their real direction, even though their apparent leaders are entirely alien to the Taoist hierarchy. Some of them, who have played a considerable role in the more or less distant past, have left in the minds of the people, mem- ories which are expressed in a legendary form: thus, we have heard that formerly the masters of such secret associations took a handful of pins and threw it on the ground, and that from these pins were born so many armed soldiers. This is exactly the story of Cadmus sowing the dragon's teeth; and these legends, which the vulgar have wrongly taken as literal, under their naïve appearances, a very real symbolic value. In many cases, it can also happen that the associations in question, or at least the most external, are in opposition and even in struggle with each other; superficial observers would not fail to draw an objection against what we have just said, and to conclude that, under such condi- tions, the unity of direction cannot exist. They would only forget one thing, which is that the direction in question is 'beyond' the opposition which they see, and not in this field in which this opposition asserts itself and for which it alone is valid. If we had to answer such contradictors, we would confine ourselves to reminding them of the Taoist teaching on the equivalent of the 'yes' and the 'no' in the primordial indistinction, and, as for the placing into practice of this teaching, we would simply return them to the apologue of the monkey trainer. We think that we have said enough to make it clear that the real in- fluence of Taoism can be extremely important, while always remaining invisible and hidden; it is not only in China that there are things such as this, but they seem to be more consistently applied here than anywhere else. It will also be understood that those who have some knowledge of the role of this traditional organization must be suspicious of appear- ances and very reserved in the estimation of events such as those cur- rently unfolding in the Far East, which are too often assimilated with what is happening in the Western world, which makes them appear in a completely false light. Chinese civilization has gone through many other crises in the past, and has always found its balance; in sum, there is nothing to indicate that the present crisis is much more serious than the preceding ones, and, even if it were admitted, it would not be a reason to suppose that it must necessarily reach where there is something much more profound and essential in the tradition of the race, and a very small number of men may be sufficient to preserve it intact in periods of trouble, for things of this order do not rely on the brute force of the multitude. Confucianism, which represents only the exterior side of the tradition, can even disappear if social conditions change to the point of requiring the constitution of an entirely new form; but Taoism is beyond these contingencies. Let it be remembered that the sage, following the Taoist teachings we have reported, “remains quiet in the center of the cosmic wheel," whatever the circumstances may be, and that even “the collapse of the universe would not cause him any emotion.”