The Tao Teh King: A Short Study in Comparative Religion: Chapter LI

The Tao Teh King: A Short Study in Comparative Religion, by C. Spurgeon Medhurst, [1905], at sacred-texts.com

CHAPTER LI.

What the Tao produces and its energy 1 nourishes, nature forms and natural forces establish. On this account there is nothing that does not honor the Tao and reverence its energy. This honor and reverence are spontaneous, not the result of a mandate.

So the Tao produces. Its energy nourishes, increases, feeds, establishes, matures, controls, broods over. It produces, but keeps nothing for itself; acts, but does not depend on its action; increases, but does not insist on having its own way. This indeed is the mystery of energy. 2

"The lark
Soars up and up, shivering for very joy;
Afar the ocean sleeps; white fishing gulls
Flit where the strand is purple with its tribe
Of nested limpets; subject creatures seek
Their loves in wood and plane—and God renews
His common rapture."

Professor Drummond expresses the innerness of this chapter when he writes—"Are we quite sure, that what we call a physical world, is, after all a physical world? The preponderating view of science at present is that it is not. The very term 'natural world,' we are told, is a misnomer; that the world is a spiritual world, merely employing 'matter' for its manifestation." "Raise the stone and there thou shalt find me, cleave the wood and there am I." Sayings of our Lord. (Logion v.)

Footnotes

87:1 The word rendered "energy" is again the Teh of chap. 38. "That which below produces the grain, and above becomes the stars, that which circulates through heaven and earth, is called the Divine Energy."—Kuan-tzu Wu-ch’eng in his commentary refuses to distinguish between the Tao and its energy. cf. Eph. iv, 6.

87:2 Translated by Dr. Edkins "Secret Energy." The original is "secret or profound Teh." Comp. the conclusion of chap. 2.