In weakness and in docility lies true strength, according to Lâo-tze and his followers. Consider, they say, the instance of water: there is nothing more gentle, yet nothing that so overwhelms. Christianity prescribes non-resistance to evil, as a consequence of love. Tâoism, long before, had taught that perfection and wisdom consist in non-resistance to the entire universe. Thus at the heart of this apparent pessimism there is an implicit optimistic faith, faith in the original goodness of reality and of its principle, the Tâo. In other Chinese writers this assumption of natural goodness is crystallized in the idea of the natural goodness of man, and—in sharp contrast with the doctrine of original sin, the most profound and terrible doctrine of Christianity—becomes the postulate of common morality centuries before Rousseau. The Book of the Three Words (San-tze-king) of Wang-pe-heu, which is used for teaching children to read, begins thus: “The character of man is essentially good.”
But it is not impossible to dissociate the theories of primitive perfection and of inaction—as indeed Kwang-tze has done in some measure. No Christian and no European philosopher doubts that man was an evil beast to start with, and that such in essence he has remained. And it is perfectly clear, to any one who reviews the daily round of human activities, that man does
