The egocentric hedonist Yang Chu, a colorful if vague figure, was a direct opposite of Mo-tzu. Being a hedonist and a social parasite, Yang Chu asserted the priority of sensual pleasures and maintained that the only important thing was to spend the years granted you in comfort, because nothing but death awaits you beyond — the bones rotting in the dust that make the great and the humble equal. The actual role of Yang Chu's ideas is not quite clear. However, Meng-tzu — who decidedly condemned both Mo-tzu and Yang Chu — put them side by side, judging that their preposterous ideas were more or less equally harmful to the people.
A much more important part in the history of Ancient Chinese thought and in actual events was played by the followers of the fa school, the Legists. They had several factions and were successfully received among the ruling class. Shen Pu-hai (400–337 B.C.), a minister at the court of Han kingdom, held the art of masterful government supreme. He maintained that the ruler of the state should pick his words with care, avoid haste in his actions and control his feelings. In ruling the state he must rely on his numerous and carefully selected assistants, none of whom he nonetheless should trust completely. The ruler is the hub and the assistants, the spokes. The ruler must not demonstrate his wisdom needlessly. Besides, he must rule by exercising the wu-wei ("non-doing") principle; i.e., he must see, hear and know everything, but organize his government so as to allow events take the desired course naturally, giving them only the occasional corrective nudge. For all that, daily strict supervision and intelligent selection of personnel are an absolute necessity. Many of Shen Pu-hai's suggestions were subsequently taken into account. Suffice it to remind the reader about the competition system used at culling qualified officials. However, it was the rigid Legism of Yang of Wei, or Shang Yang (390–338 B.C.), that played a far greater part in the history of Ancient China and Chinese civilization as a whole.
Shang Yang was a relative of the ruler of the Wei kingdom; he came to Ch'in at the request of Ch'in's ruler Hsiao Kung, who dreamed of reforming and radically strengthening his vast, though sparsely populated and semi-barbarian state. The essence of Shang Yang's reform — which was decently expressed in his treatise and even better demonstrated in the course of the radical changes he started (they were described in the historical work of Ssu-ma Ch'ien) — is that the people ought to be ruled with a rod of iron. Initially, the reform involved only double taxation exacted from families having more than one grown man in order to force such families to move and settle uncultivated lands. Then the Ch'in authorities published the law that invited immigrants from different, overpopulated states of Chungkuo (the "Middle Kingdoms") to Ch'in, providing fairly favorable condition for them. Generally speaking, laws — i.e., orders given by the authorities — were to become the main tool of ruling the people. Failure to obey laws (it was officials' duty to circulate their main idea among the people) entailed punishment. Shang Yang prescribed severe punishments even for trifling offences so as to discourage people from transgressing seriously, with a view to eliminating grave crimes in Ch'in. Conduct of the people must be strictly controlled and its efforts must be channeled into "productive occupations", i.e., farming and soldiering. The pao-chia system that incorporated small groups of five and ten families, each headed by a responsible appointee, involved the practice of mutual help — and also of mutual spying. Everyone was responsible for everyone else. Warriors were rewarded for military exploits. Reward found expression primarily in the system of socio-administrative ranks (there were normally 18 to 20 of them) created by Shang Yang and currently well-known all over the world. The lower ranks of that system were assigned among villagers. You were born, married, procreated a child, became the head of a large family, the patriarch of a group of kindred families, you were elected or appointed the head of a pao-chia or a community — all these phases of your life correspond to ranks 1–8 of the system. Higher ranks were assigned bureaucrats and soldiers for their service and special merits. Ranks higher than the 8th one normally entailed a position with a good wage, while the holders of the top ranks were often granted, as part of their office, the privilege to live at the expense of local population.
Shang Yang, who for his great services was granted one of the very top ranks and a landed estate with a right to use revenues for his personal needs, could not abide "parasites". He filed under that heading the scholars of rival schools (mostly Confucians) and, first and foremost, the nouveaux riches (though he had no love for the old aristocrats either, stripping them of rewards and honors whenever they failed to exhibit military valor). The owner of private property is, by his very nature, an enemy of the state, since that which was once received — and which must be received — by the state goes to his pocket. Shang Yang suggested that all the rich must buy ranks for large sums of money, and no one refused such offers. Thus the buyer was losing his wealth, but obtained prestige, which was highly prized in the rank-divided society. Shang Yang strictly controlled the government apparatus and encouraged mutual spying and informing within it. Unlike Confucians, he was not of the opinion that the state machinery needed the intelligent and the capable. It really needed the mediocre, the assiduous, the law-abiding. According to Shang Yang, the people at large were just cattle — a view he never concealed. The basically true slogan, "The weaker the people, the stronger the state," was his favorite dictum. Shang Yang was extremely cynical, but to give him his due he worked expertly. Having taken the iron rod of power in his hands, he used it unceasingly, treating the people as submissive cattle, he proved capable of quickly transforming the backward state of Ch'in into a developed, well-ordered and wealthy kingdom whose military power was perhaps unrivaled in the Under-Heaven.
Philosophy of Taoism was one of the most intriguing trends in Ancient Chinese thought. It is important to keep in mind that, up to the late 4th and early 3rd centuries, China was not familiar with mythology, heroic epos, mysticism and metaphysics proper to religious doctrine, especially in the sphere of cos-mogonic constructs. As pointed out in Volumes I and II of this three-volume publication, all the main ideologemes, ceremonial rites and reforms were equally aimed at the same goal of creating in the Under-Heaven favorable conditions for achieving purely earthly, if sometimes very diverse, objectives. However, since the above-indicated point in time, many things begin to change. The Tso-chuan, a commentary on the Ch 'unch Чи chronicle, mentions the six primary elements, liu-fu (earth, water, fire, metal, wood, grain). In the Old Iranian Avesta, in the section dealing with Zoroaster's (fl. no later than the 7th century B.C.) reforms, we find a nearly identical group of six elements: earth, water, fire, metal, wood, cattle. In the semi-nomadic Iranian society, cattle was a really important substance, whereas in the Chou China it was practically absent. There are grounds to suspect that in the commentary in question cattle was replaced with grain; subsequently, the commentator reasoned logically that wood and grain represented a single substance and these two elements became supplanted with one — plants. Thus the Ancient Chinese thought acquired the notion of wu-hsing, the five proto-elements (the first five elements of the Iranian and Chou lists). The fact that these groups of five elements are completely identical is not accidental. Furthermore, this likeness goes much deeper, beyond the obvious. Zoroastrian dualism was based on the opposition of the forces of Good and Light to those of Evil and Darkness. The Tso-chuan also refers to yin and yang, and Ancient Chinese dictionaries clearly define them, respectively, as the northern, dark and the southern, bright sides of a mountain, not as metaphysical notions.
Chapter 74 of Ssu-ma Ch'ien's Shih Chi tells of the philosopher Tsou Yan (350–270 B.C.), who was noted for his profound speeches and unusual ideas that were highly esteemed by his contemporaries, especially rulers, who treated him with much greater respect than Confucius or Meng-tzu. Tsou Yan wrote many works that amounted to 100,000 characters and that have not survived. According to Ssu-ma Ch'ien, Tsou Yan "reached the very wellspring of life, when Heaven and Earth have not yet emerged and utter darkness reigned." Tsou Yan knew of "the overseas lands that men could not behold." He maintained that, "since the time when Heaven and Earth opened up and became divided, the five te virtues are in constant circulation…" and that Chungkuo, i.e., China, represented "only one eighty-first part of the Under-Heaven." But what mattered most was that Tsou Yan "thought deeply about the waxing and waning of the yang and у in forces, penetrated into the vicissitudes of all changes."
Here we have an extremely important text. For the first time, China produced a thinker who, contrary to the accepted norm and having no predecessors to lean upon, delved deeply into mysticism and created impressive metaphysi-cal-cosmogonic constructs. He has been to places that none of the Chinese has been to; he has seen that which none of them has seen. He spoke assuredly of the time when Heaven and Earth have not yet emerged and darkness prevailed; he stated that China was merely one eighty-first part of the Under-Heaven. Where Tsou Yan could have borrowed these ideas from? They were well known to Indian thinkers who wrote about the nine dvipa continents, each of which in turn consisted of nine parts. Tsou Yan discussed problems of cosmogony in earnest, though all earlier Chinese thinkers were completely indifferent to them. Besides, he spoke of the incessant circulation of certain "five te [substances]", which were obviously somehow related to the wu-hsing proto-elements. He also pondered over the rise and fall of the yang and yin forces, which corresponds so fully to the Iranian idea of the eternal struggle between the forces of Good and Evil, of Light and Darkness. The Tsou Yan phenomenon remains an enigma[304], just like many things associated with Taoist philosophy, starting with Chuang-tzu (369–286 B.C.).
We mean here the mysterious origin of those ideas, including mythology, which appears for the first time in Chinese writings (we refrain from discussing oral tradition, as it is hard to say something definite regarding it) and is widely represented in the Chuang-tzu. The book in question is one of the most interesting in the Ancient China. In addition to profound metaphysical constructs that are entirely foreign to any earlier Chinese text, it contains a huge number of parables, anecdotes, myths and short essays on abstract topics.
Chuang-tzu's metaphysics and cosmogony proceed from the assumption that the Universe was created out of the original Chaos and that its creation is related to the Great Tao (the Tao of Taoism, which differs from the Tao of Confucius) — a certain Supreme Absolute, extrinsic to the phenomenal world and undetectable by the senses. Те is an emanation of Tao[305]. Tao is everywhere and nowhere, it pervades everything and it lies at the bottom of the cosmogonic process. The ideas of Chuang-tzu — like those of Tsou Yan — are very unorthodox for Ancient Chinese thought. It is very hard to believe that they could have popped up out of the blue, in a country where no one took interest in such things before. Well, there is no need to believe that. One has but to pick up, for instance, an unassuming chrestomathy titled Ancient Indian Philosophy (Drev-neindiyskaya filosofiya, Moscow, 1972; in Russian) to find very similar in nature — though much more refined and elaborated — constructs of the Rigveda and Upanishads. They contain the same ideas: the Great Brahman-Absolute and its emanation Atman, the existent and non-existent, Chaos and the emergence of the One, the latter's association with thought (the Word, Logos), the original emptiness so favored by Chuang-tzu.
Here is another important detail to be added to what was said above: the Chinese term ch 7 (lit. "air") was given by Taoists a new meaning: "vital force", "energy" and the like. According to them, the universe turned out to be permeated with the vigorously circulating ch 7 proto-substance. It is this ch 7 complex that Taoists equate with life. If such a complex disintegrates, then life ends. If a new complex of this kind forms, then a new life is created. The idea of reincarnation — which was so thoroughly developed in Ancient India and totally unknown in China until the time of Chuang-tzu's publication — was first clearly set forth in the just mentioned work. In addition to ch 7 "at large", Taoist text begin to mention "the finest/subtlest cA7" (pi.; ching-ch'i), whose presence enables spiritual life in man and in all animate beings. The Chandogya Upani-shad (VI, 7–8) states that food consists of three parts. The coarsest part eventually forms excreta, the intermediate part is digested by the body and feeds it, and the finest part becomes — in humans — their breath, thoughts and words. Another version of the text present the same idea in a somewhat different context: the fine substance is that which makes salt salt, a mosquito a mosquito, and a tiger a tiger; i.e., the finest is the base of the essence (the quality of being itself) in all things and of spirituality in man.
So, Taoist philosophy, as regards its basic innovative ideas — let us put it as gently as we can — is not entirely free (to say the least) from extraneous influences. The twofold source of that influence is the Indo-Iranian metaphysical thought. The content of the most widely known work of Taoist philosophy, the Tao-te ching ascribed to Lao-tzu, attests to the same. The pithy dicta of that extremely profound and structurally complex text are really impressive. Most likely, it was written later than the Chuang-tzu, though there are several versions that allow of different opinions. However, what really deserves attention is the problem of its authorship.
The work is attributed to Lao-tzu, there are no other "claimants" to its authorship. In this connection, it is extremely interesting that Lao-tzu — allegedly a senior contemporary of Confucius — seems to be, most likely, a figment of Chuang-tzu's imagination. No text mentions Lao-tzu's name prior to the work of Chuang-tzu. But there is more to it than just that. It is more important to realize why Chuang-tzu needed that old man, who subsequently became wrapped in legend. This is not difficult to realize. Chuang-tzu (like Tsou Yan, for that matter) put forward some ideas that were completely unheard-of in China. However, unlike Tsou Yan's ideas — that were, for all their cardinal importance, easy to understand, — Chuang-tzu's suggestions seemed rather vague. It appears that, initially, even the wisest ones were unable to grasp his ideas. So Chuang-tzu experienced an urgent need for a valid basis that would have very ancient roots, for the Chinese highly valued nothing but old tradition. So he invented a certain "Old Man" who was nearly Confucius' precursor (this temporal tie-in is most important), who had the nerve to lecture the Master haughtily, while the latter allegedly accepted with meekness wisdom thus imparted.
