A dream of Neolithic simplicity and innocence

[randy_byers]

'Evolving simultaneously with these various currents of thought was that represented by the text presented here, the school known as Taoism. Like many of the other schools, it looked back to an ideal age in the past, but one that predated the dawn of Chinese history and written culture, a kind of dream of Neolithic simplicity and innocence. Addressing the ruler, as did many of the thinkers of the period, the Taoists counseled him to spurn both the earnest moral strivings of the Confucians and Mo-ists and the harsh and meddlesome measures of the Legalists and instead to adopt a policy of inaction, or laissez-faire. Speaking to the ordinary men and women of these troublous times [in the Warring States period], the Taoists instructed them how to survive by crouching low and keeping out of the line of fire. What in particular sets the Taoists apart from the other schools of philosophy is the marked strain of mysticism and quietism that underlies so much of their thought, a strain that seems to reach far back into the roots of Chinese culture. It is this strain that in a Taoist text such as the Tao Te Ching engenders its most potent symbols: water, darkness, the valley, the female, the babe.'

-- Burton Watson, introduction to Tao Te Ching (Shambhala Publications, 1993)