In his translation of the Works of Chuang-tzŭ in 1881, Mr. Balfour adopted Nature as the ordinary rendering of the Chinese Tao. He says, “When the word is translated Way of Nature—her processes, her methods, and her laws; when translated Reason, it is the same as li—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 the 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 wu (= 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.15
The term Nature, however, is so handy, and often fits so appropriately into a version, that if Tao 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 Laozi.
Mr. Balfour himself says, “The primary signification of Tao is simply ‘road.’ ” Beyond question this meaning underlies the use of it by the great master of Taoism and by Chuang-tzŭ.16 Let the reader refer to the version of the twenty-fifth chapter of Lao’s treatise, and to the notes subjoined to it. There Tao 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 Tao.” Having established this name, he subsequently uses it repeatedly; see chh. xxxiv and liii. In the third paragraph of his twentieth chapter, Chuang-tzŭ uses a synonymous phrase instead of Lao’s “Great Tao,” calling it the “Great Tʽu,” about which there can be no dispute, as meaning “the Great Path,” “Way,” or “Course.”17 In the last paragraph his twenty-fifth book, Chuang-tzŭ again sets forth the metaphorical origin of the name Tao. “Tao,” he says, “cannot be regarded as having a positive existence; existences cannot be regarded as nonexistent. The name Tao 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 Tao. Words not being sufficient, we may talk about it the whole day, and the subject of discourse will only have been a thing. Tao 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 Tao therefore is a phenomenon; not a positive being, but a mode of being. Lao’s idea of it may become plainer as we proceed to other points of his system. In the meaning time, the best way of dealing with it in translating is to transfer it to the version, instead of trying to introduce an English equivalent of it.
Next in importance to Tao is the name Tʽien, meaning at first the vaulted sky or the open firmament of heaven. In the Confucian Classics, and in the speech of the Chinese people, this name is used metaphorically as it is by ourselves for the Supreme Being, with reference especially to His will and rule. So it was that the idea of God arose among the Chinese fathers; so it was that they proceeded to fashion a name for God, calling Him Ti, and Shang Ti, “the Ruler,” and “the Supreme Ruler.” The Taoist fathers found this among their people; but in their idea of the Tao they had already a supreme concept which superseded the necessity of any other. The name Ti for God only occurs once in the Tao Te Ching; in the well-known passage of the fourth chapter, where, speaking of the Tao, Laozi says, “I do not know whose son it is; it might seem to be before God.”
Nor is the name Tʽien very common. We have the phrase, “heaven and earth,” used for the two great constituents of the cosmos, owing their origin to the Tao, and also for a sort of binomial power, acting in harmony with the Tao, covering, protecting, nurturing, and maturing all things. Never once is Tʽien used in the sense of God, the Supreme Being. In its peculiarly Taoistic employment, it is more an adjective than a noun.
