Note 11 — Chapter XVI · Myths and Doctrines of Taoism

The meaning of the word “Tao”, says Max Von Brandt, “has never been explained or understood,” and he adds, “Like the Hellenistic ‘Logos’, it is at once the efficient and the material cause.”11 Professor G. Foot Moore says, “Tao is literally ‘way’; like corresponding words in many languages, ‘course’, ‘method’, ‘order’, ‘norm’.”12 Archdeacon Hardwick13 was “disposed to argue” that the system of Taoism was founded on the idea of “some power resembling the ‘Nature’ of modern speculators. The indefinite expression ‘Tao’ was adopted to denominate an abstract cause, or the initial principle of life and order, to which worshippers were able to assign the attributes of immateriality, eternity, immensity, invisibility.”