Note 193 — Chapter III · PROGRESS UNDER ANCIENT RELIGIONS

In the same way Lao-Tsze came to be worshipped as a God193 under the religion called Taouism, a title sometimes mistranslated as rationalism, “a name admirably calculated to lead the mind astray as to what the religion is.”194 It would seem as if the older notion of the Tau, philosophically purified by Lao-Tsze, remained a popular basis for his school, and so wrought its degradation. The Taoists or Tao-sse “do their utmost to be as unreasonable as possible.”195 They soon reverted from the philosophic mysticism of Lao-Tsze, after a stage of indifferentism,196 to a popular supernaturalism,197 which “the cultivated Chinese now regard with unmixed contempt”;198 the crystallized common-sense of Confucius, on the other hand, allied as it is with official ceremonialism, retaining its hold as an esoteric code for the learned. The evolution has thus closely resembled that which took place in India.