What is the Meaning of the Name Tao? The first translation of the Tâo Teh King into a Western language was executed in Latin by some of the Roman Catholic missionaries, and a copy of it was brought to England by a Mr. Matthew Raper, F. R. S., and presented by him to the Society at a meeting on the 10th January, 1788, - being the gift to him of P. Jos. de Grammont, 'Missionarius
Apostolicus, ex-Jesuita.' In this version Tâo is taken in the sense of Ratio, or the Supreme Reason of the Divine Being, the Creator and Governor. M. Abel Rémusat, the first Professor of Chinese in Paris, does not seem to have been aware of the existence of the above version in London, but his attention was attracted to Lâo's treatise about 1820, and, in 1823, he wrote of the character Tâo, "Ce mot me semble ne pas pouvoir être bien traduit, si ce n'est par le mot [Logos]
dans le triple sens de souverain Être, de raison, et de parole." Rémusat's successor in the chair of Chinese, the late Stanislas Julien, published in 1842 a translation of the whole treatise. Having concluded from an examination of it, and the earliest Tâoist writers, such as Kwang-dze, Ho-kwan Dze, and Ho-shang Kung, that the Tâo was devoid of action, of thought, of judgment, and of intelligence, he concluded that it was impossible to understand by it "the Primordial
Reason, or the Sublime Intelligence which created, and which governs the world," and to this he subjoined the following note: "Quelque étrange que puisse paraître cette idée de Lâo-dze, elle n'est pas sans exemple dans l'histoire de la philosophie. Le mot nature n'a-t-il pas été employé par certains philosophes, que la religion et la raison condamnent, pour désigner une cause première, également dépourvue de pensée et d'intelligence?" Julien himself did not doubt that Lâo's
idea of the character was that it primarily and properly meant "a way," and hence he translated the title Tâo Teh King by "Le Livre de la Voie et de la Vertu," transferring at the same time the name Tâo to the text of his version. The first English writer who endeavoured to give a distinct account of Tâoism was the late Archdeacon Hardwick, while he held the office of Christian Advocate in the University of Cambridge. In his "Christ and other Masters" (vol. ii, p. 67), when
treating of the religions of China, he says: "I feel disposed to argue that the centre of the system founded by Lâo-dze had been awarded to some energy or power resembling the <Nature> of modern speculators. The indefinite expression Tâo was adopted to denominate an abstract cause, of the initial principle of life and order, to which worshippers were able to assign the attributes of immateriality, eternity, immensity, invisibility." It was, probably,
Julien's reference in his note to the use of the term nature, which suggested to Hardwick his analogy between Lâo-dze's Tâo, and "the Nature of modern speculation." Canon Farrar has said, "We have long personified under the name of Nature the sum total of God's laws as observed in the physical world; and now the notion of Nature as a distinct, living, independent entity seems to be ineradicable alike from our literature and our systems of philosophy. But it seems to me that
this metaphorical or mythological use of the word nature for the Cause and Ruler of it, implies the previous notion of Him, that is, of God, in the mind. Does not this clearly appear in the words of Seneca? - <Vis illum (h.e. jovem Deum) naturam vocare, non peccabis: - hic est ex quo nata sunt omnia, cujus spiritu vivimus.>" In his translation of the Works of Kwang-dze in 1881, Mr. Balfour adopted Nature as the ordinary rendering of the Chinese Tâo. He says,
"When the word is translated Way, it means the Way of Nature, - her processes, her methods, and her laws; when translated Reason, it is the same as lî, - the power that works in all created things, producing, preserving, and life-giving, - the intelligent principle of the world; when translated Doctrine, it refers to the True doctrine respecting the laws and mysteries of Nature." He calls attention also to the point that "he uses NATURE in the sense of Natura naturans, while
the Chinese expression wan wû (= all things) denotes Natura naturata." But this really comes to the metaphorical use of nature which has been touched upon above. It can claim as its patrons great names like those of Aquinas, Giordano Bruno, and Spinoza, but I have never been able to see that its barbarous phraseology makes it more than a figure of speech. The term Nature, however, is so handy, and often fits so appropriately into a version, that if Tâo had ever such a
signification I should not hesitate to employ it as freely as Mr. Balfour has done; but as it has not that signification, to try to put a non-natural meaning into it, only perplexes the mind, and obscures the idea of Lâo-dze. Mr. Balfour himself says (p. xviii), "The primary signification of Tâo is simply <road.>" Beyond question this meaning underlies the use of it by the great master of Tâoism and by Kwang-dze. Let the reader refer to the version of the
twenty-fifth chapter of Lâo's treatise, and to the notes subjoined to it. There Tâo appears as the spontaneously operating cause of all movement in the phenomena of the universe; and the nearest the writer can come to a name for it is "the Great Tâo." Having established this name, he subsequently uses it repeatedly; see chh. xxxiv and liii. In the third paragraph of his twentieth chapter, Kwang-dze uses a synonymous phrase instead of Lâo's "Great Tâo," calling it the "Great
Thû," about which there can be no dispute, as meaning "the Great Path," "Way," or "Course." In the last paragraph of his twenty-fifth Book, Kwang-dze again sets forth the metaphorical origin of the name Tâo. "Tâo," he says, "cannot be regarded as having a positive existence; existences cannot be regarded as non-existent. The name Tâo is a metaphor used for the purpose of description. To say that it exercises some causation, or that it does nothing, is speaking of it from the
phase of a thing; - how can such language serve as a designation of it in its greatness? If words were sufficient for the purpose, we might in a day's time exhaust the subject of the Tâo. Words not being sufficient, we may talk about it the whole day, and the subject of discourse will only have been a thing. Tâo is the extreme to which things conduct us. Neither speech nor silence is sufficient to convey the notion of it. When we neither speak nor refrain from speech, our
speculations about it reach their highest point." The Tâo therefore is a phenomenon; not a positive being, but a mode of being. Lâo's idea of it may become plainer as we proceed to other points of his system. In the meantime, the best way of dealing with it in translating is to transfer it to the version, instead of trying to introduce an English equivalent for it. (From James Legge's Introduction to The Texts of Taoism, part 1 & 2, Sacred Books of the East, Volume 39.) |