LAOU TSZE was born B.C. 604, and died B.C. 520, at the age of 84 ; Confucius, Kung-fu-tze, was born B.C. 551, and died in !Lc. 479, at the age of 72 ; thus they were contemporaries. Con fucius visited Laou Tsze at the court of Chow. The parents of Laou Tszc were probably very poor, his father, according to ono account, being a peasant who had remained unmarried up to his seventieth year, and then married a peasant woman of forty. Laou Tsze, through his learning and abilities, obtained employment at the court of Chow, but eventually withdrew to retirement among the hills of his native country on the eastern borders of Ho-nan, where he devoted his whole time and energies to philosophical research, and there produced his celebrated book the Taou-Tih King. The ethical doctrines of this book exalt virtue as the chief good, and are based on meta physical speculations. The Taou-Tih-King, the book of virtue and reason, contains his religious philosophy. It was translated into French by M. Stanislas Julien.
Ilia followers are known as Taou-tsze or Taouista. The word Taou means, in the first place, a way, and then a principle, and is used to signify the supremo principle of the universe. The meaning which Laou Tszo gave to Taou is obscure ; and as Taouisni exists in China, his metaphysical explana tions are disguised in gross superstitions, and his ethical doctrines are indolent indifferentism.
Lam Tsze himself is now the third in a trinity of persons in whom Taou has assumed personality, called in the writings of the sect Shang-Te, and worshipped as the three pure ones; and they assert that he left heaven and became incarnate as the sago of Chow. They are alchemists. The priests of the sect of Taou are numerous, and constitute nearly all the followers. Some are celibates and hermits. They worship the sun, moon, and stars. There are Taouist nunneries ; their nuns do not shave their heads.—Archdeacon Gray's China, 06.