feel that he is trying to express something for which the language of
his day was inadequate; and what he wanted to express belonged to the
emotional, not the intellectual, side of the human character, so that
any perfectly clear expression of it in words was entirely impossible.
It must be borne in mind that the Chinese language lacks definite word
categories like substantive, adjective, adverb, or verb; any word can be
used now in one category and now in another, with a few exceptions; thus
the understanding of a combination like "white horse" formed a difficult
logical problem for the thinker of the fourth century B.C.: did it mean
"white" plus "horse"? Or was "white horse" no longer a horse at all but
something quite different?

Confucius's way of bringing human life into harmony with the life of the
universe was to be a process of assimilating Man as a social being, Man
in his social environment, to Nature, and of so maintaining his activity
within the bounds of the community. Lao TzÅ­ pursues another path, the
path for those who feel disappointed with life in the community. A
Taoist, as a follower of Lao TzÅ­ is called, withdraws from all social
life, and carries out none of the rites and ceremonies which a man of
the upper class should observe throughout the day. He lives in
self-imposed seclusion, in an elaborate primitivity which is often
described in moving terms that are almost convincing of actual
"primitivity". Far from the city, surrounded by Nature, the Taoist lives
his own life, together with a few friends and his servants, entirely
according to his nature. His own nature, like everything else,
represents for him a part of the Tao, and the task of the individual
consists in the most complete adherence to the Tao that is conceivable,
as far as possible performing no act that runs counter to the Tao. This
is the main element of Lao TzÅ­'s doctrine, the doctrine of _wu-wei_,
"passive achievement".