Like the obscure philosopher of early
Greek speculation, he believed in the identity of contraries; like Plato,
he was an idealist, and had all the idealist's contempt for utilitarian
systems; he was a mystic like Dionysius, and Scotus Erigena, and Jacob
Bohme, and held, with them and with Philo, that the object of life was to
get rid of self-consciousness, and to become the unconscious vehicle of a
higher illumination. In fact, Chuang Tzu may be said to have summed up
in himself almost every mood of European metaphysical or mystical
thought, from Heraclitus down to Hegel. There was something in him of
the Quietist also; and in his worship of Nothing he may be said to have
in some measure anticipated those strange dreamers of mediaeval days who,
like Tauler and Master Eckhart, adored the purum nihil and the Abyss. The
great middle classes of this country, to whom, as we all know, our
prosperity, if not our civilisation, is entirely due, may shrug their
shoulders over all this and ask, with a certain amount of reason, what is
the identity of contraries to them, and why they should get rid of that
self-consciousness which is their chief characteristic. But Chuang Tzu
was something more than a metaphysician and an illuminist. He sought to
destroy society, as we know it, as the middle classes know it; and the
sad thing is that he combines with the passionate eloquence of a Rousseau
the scientific reasoning of a Herbert Spencer. There is nothing of the
sentimentalist in him. He pities the rich more than the poor, if he ever
pities at all, and prosperity seems to him as tragic a thing as
suffering. He has nothing of the modern sympathy with failures, nor does
he propose that the prizes should always be given on moral grounds to
those who come in last in the race. It is the race itself that he
objects to; and as for active sympathy, which has become the profession
of so many worthy people in our own day, he thinks that trying to make
others good is as silly an occupation as 'beating a drum in a forest in
order to find a fugitive.' It is a mere waste of energy. That is all.
While, as for a thoroughly sympathetic man, he is, in the eyes of Chuang
Tzu, simply a man who is always trying to be somebody else, and so misses
the only possible excuse for his own existence.

Yes; incredible as it may seem, this curious thinker looked back with a
sigh of regret to a certain Golden Age when there were no competitive
examinations, no wearisome educational systems, no missionaries, no penny
dinners for the people, no Established Churches, no Humanitarian
Societies, no dull lectures about one's duty to one's neighbour, and no
tedious sermons about any subject at all. In those ideal days, he tells
us, people loved each other without being conscious of charity, or
writing to the newspapers about it. They were upright, and yet they
never published books upon Altruism. As every man kept his knowledge to
himself, the world escaped the curse of scepticism; and as every man kept
his virtues to himself, nobody meddled in other people's business. They
lived simple and peaceful lives, and were contented with such food and
raiment as they could get.