Tae Rayne or Lire, based on the philosophy of Lao-Tzu, from the Dutch of Henri Borel, translated by M. E. Reynolds, Wisdom of the East series. John Murray. 3s. 6d.
This little volume may be considered as a sort of supplement to "The Sayings of Lao-Tzu," translated by Lional Giles, and also published. by Mr. Murray in the delightful series, which allows English readers to glean scraps of wisdom from the ast. M. Borel is a well-known ' writer and journalist who has written much about Java, China and Japan, and he gives us a sort of Western paraphrase of that strange little book called by some "Tao Te China, and by M. Borel ''Wu-Wei." The founder of Taoism, which is the religion of the common people in China, lived half a century before Confucius, but absolutely nothing is known about im. LaoTzu may never have existed, and as Professor Giles suggests, the book may be merely a collection of old saying. But whatever they are, they have formed the basis of a magical religion which is strong all over China. to-day. Yet not one scrap of the tenets of a Taoist priest can be found in Tao Ta Ching. Whas does this matter? We all read Lao-Tzu, and no one cares a cent whether he lived any more than we care -if Homer lived, or King Arthur, or Ulysses or Romulus. Seme find the translations of Chinese into English hard to read, and the more one knows of Chinese, and especially the ancient language of China, the less reliance one places on the tpsissima yerba. Let us leave its accuracy to version, and it is beautiful philosophy. Let us learn its accuracy to be fought out by sinologues. They love a battle. Lao-Tm anticipated Plate, and has given the world some marvellous words of wisdom which are as true to-day as when they were written.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.