as "way", was to influence the formation of the two great indigenous religions of China. The Tao--and "how to know it, live it, and construct a society that exemplifies it"--has been the thread that runs through all Chinese thought and religious expression and has, consequently, affected Korean and Japanese civilization as well (Ellwood & McGraw 183). Chinese thinkers held that there were three realms in which the Tao could be realized: nature, society, and the individual's inner being. How these realms related to each other and how the meaning of the Tao was to be elucidated were questions that were answered in two ways. On the one hand, the Confucianists held that the Tao could best be discovered by human beings within their own tradition and society "and so was explored through human relationships and rituals and by the use of human reason" (Ellwood and McGraw 184). The Taoists, on the other hand, believed that the Tao was corrupted by reason and by human institutions and held that the true way was best discovered in mystical trances and raptures in which the individual experienced a merging with the infinity of nature and of the mystical.
Ellwood and McGraw compare the Confucianist and Taoist orientations to the difference between Western "rationalists and romantics" (184). And Parrinder offers the interesting comparison of their philosophical differences as those between "activist" Confucianism and "Quietist" Taoism; the former, which was favored by the Court and the upper classes, led to a religion "of ethics and of social behaviour" while the latter led to a "religion of mysticism" and "never lost sight of its more popular roots" (327-28). Yet both had their roots in China's past. Confucius was revered as much for himself as for his relationship to the ancient books, some of which he reinterpreted for a new age and others that he wrote himself. These ancient works "reflect basic Chinese values and ways of thinking" ...