Note 46 — Chapter VI · HOLY BOOKS, OR BIBLES. (continued 2)

By far the best European work on the Taò-tĕ-Kīng is that of Victor von Strauss, and I have followed his translation, though not without consulting those of others. I am fully sensible of the inconvenience of a double translation, and I should have preferred to follow Chalmers' English rendering of Laò-tsé, had not the obscurity of his version been so great as to render it almost unintelligible to the general reader. Reinhold von Plänckner's translation errs on the other side by excess of clearness. It is a palpable attempt to force upon the ancient Chinaman a connected system professedly unraveled from the text by the ingenuity of the modern German. It should be used only with extreme caution, or not at all.