This _tao_, indefinable and in its essence unknowable, is "the
fountain-head of all beings, and the norm of all actions. But it is
not only the formative principle of the universe; it also seems to be
primordial matter: chaotic in its composition, born prior to Heaven
and earth, noiseless, formless, standing alone in its solitude, and
not changing, universal in its activity, and unrelaxing, without being
exhausted, it is capable of becoming the mother of the universe." And
there we may leave it. There is no scheme of creation, properly so
called. The Unwalkable Way leads us to nothing further in the way of
a cosmogony.


Confucius's Agnosticism

Confucius (551-479 B.C.) did not throw any light on the problem of
origin. He did not speculate on the creation of things nor the end
of them. He was not troubled to account for the origin of man, nor
did he seek to know about his hereafter. He meddled neither with
physics nor metaphysics. There might, he thought, be something on
the other side of life, for he admitted the existence of spiritual
beings. They had an influence on the living, because they caused
them to clothe themselves in ceremonious dress and attend to the
sacrificial ceremonies. But we should not trouble ourselves about
them, any more than about supernatural things, or physical prowess,
or monstrosities. How can we serve spiritual beings while we do not
know how to serve men? We feel the existence of something invisible
and mysterious, but its nature and meaning are too deep for the
human understanding to grasp. The safest, indeed the only reasonable,
course is that of the agnostic--to leave alone the unknowable, while
acknowledging its existence and its mystery, and to try to understand