laotzu

Updated: May 20, 2025

Since there are bad as well as good gods, it is necessary to propitiate them with offerings of agreeable food, playing the lute, blowing the flute, singing and dancing, and whatever else is likely to put them in good humour. "It has been asked whether the Kami no michi is not the same as the Taoism of Laotzu.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era

Laotzu hated the vain conceits of the Chinese scholars, and honoured naturalness, from which a resemblance may be argued; but as he was born in a dirty country not under special protection of the Sun goddess, he had heard only the theories of the succession of so-called 'holy men, and what he believed to be naturalness was simply what they called natural.

F. (Frank) Brinkley - A History of the Japanese People : From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era