study. There is a certain pedagogical simplificationat the root of the text, and the discussion ofHanfeizi (191f), for example, is mostly a reduction.This is the wrong approach. The purpose of an

introduction is not to compare traditions. It is toprovide a sympathetic study of a chosen subjectand establish its native importance. Readers at thislevel should be introduced to the Chinese sources,which resist the logical simplification at the heartof the analytic exercise. There are additionaldifficulties here, however. One of the problemswith most of theWestern work on Chinese thoughtis that it relies on conventional translations, whichfail to capture the meaning of the Chinese.One example is the character for Dao, which is

notoriously difficult to translate. Thus, Liu writes,we need to look at ‘each particular context’ to‘decipher’ which sense of the character is beingused. (133) The bigger difficulty is that referencesto the Dao employ many of these different sensesin conjunction with each other. Although Liu isaware of these linguistic difficulties, the logicalanalysis in the book cannot be sustained without afar more accurate account of the originals. Literaltranslations would be less appealing but far more

correct, philosophically. This is not a criticism ofLiu, particularly, but her decision to follow ananalytic approach brings these problems to thefore.There are other problems on the language front.

Liu uses the term ‘political clout’ as if it was a termof art (196). ‘Realism’, she says, borrowing anoblique formula, ‘is the view that there is a fact ofthe matter with things in the world.’ (157) Liu’s useof the word ‘ineffable’ (133) is idiosyncratic. Thereal issues come with philosophical terms, however,like ‘noumena’ (258) or ‘de-ontological’ (116), whichcarry too much intellectual baggage. Even wordslike ‘know’ come with philosophical implications.JeeLoo Liu deserves credit for raising a number

of cosmological, metaphysical, and ontologicalissues in the ancient Chinese canon. This isoutweighed, however, by her failure to acknowl-edge the singularity of the Chinese philosophicaltradition, which does not derive its value fromWestern modes of analysis. The tradition shouldbe introduced to students on its own terms.

St Thomas University,Fredericton, Canada

Paul Groarke

The Pristine Dao: Metaphysics in Early Daoist Discourse (SUNY series in Chinese Philosophy and Culture). ByThomas Michael. Pp. xi, 170, Albany; SUNY, 2005, $64.50.

Thomas Michael begins The Pristine Dao bystating that the standard account of Daoismdistinguishes between its philosophical and reli-gious traditions. He then sets out his own position,which is that the religious character of Daoism canbe traced to its earliest sources. There are problemswith his use of the term ‘Daoism’, however, andphilosophers will probably wonder whether Mi-chael is using the word in the same way as otherauthors. The body of writing that he is studyingseems too close to its mythological sources to beincluded in a formal religious tradition.This failure to explain essential terms is a more

general problem. At the end of the book, Michaelwrites that religion provides us ‘with the materialfor creating or discovering, inheriting or main-taining, the different meanings with which weinvest the world.’ (145) The only admission he iswilling to make on the substantive side is thatreligion deals with some ‘quelque chose d’autre’that identifies the ‘unknown origin on which allhuman sense and civilization is built’. This is arelatively empty notion of religion, which robs theclaim that the earliest Daoist sources are ‘religious’of its significance.Michael is working with a weak idea of theory,

however. He speaks of ‘the violence’ that he has

done to the writings he is studying (3) and there is apersonal component in his theorizing that di-minishes its significance. He describes his owncategories as aids to ‘intelligibility’, which reflecthis own knowledge of theology and metaphysics,and ‘inevitably falsify’. (5) This kind of epistemo-logical hand-wringing serves little purpose anddistracts from the purpose of the book.Michael discusses the early Daoist texts in ‘four

primary domains’: cosmogony, cosmology, ontol-ogy and soteriology. The last term refers to atheory of salvation. There is a wide array ofsources, some recently discovered, and the book isordered by thematic sub-titles (‘Placental Waters’,‘The Hidden Sage is Not a Public King’, ‘TheFractured World’, ‘The Neiye Describes the Bodyas Jing’). Micheal’s prose probably reflects hisexperience as a teacher and the book reads as if heis interacting verbally with his readers.The principal argument is relatively simple. The

Pristine Dao traces the origins of Daoism to themythological deity Taiyi, or Dayi. This deity is thefigure of a mother, who gives birth to the cosmos.Michael writes that the figure of Taiyi – and thecomponent character, yi or One, written with asingle stroke – becomes a metaphor for the PristineDao. This Dao is a cosmogonic existence without

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divisions, from which arises yin and yang, and theten thousand things. It represents a place outsideordinary time and space, dark and abyssal, whichsome sources describe as a ‘placental sac’ (29) thatbursts into creation.There is an effort to explain change and becoming

in these early Chinese writings. They appear to bebased on the same kind of early, pre-philosophicalsources that find expression in the pre-Socratics.One of the more captivating features of this body ofthought is that it removes the ordinary demarcationbetween physical and intellectual experience. Thereis a mythical and sexual origin to this idea, whichgives the sage shamanic powers. The Daoist sagepushes through the ‘gate-ways’ between the differ-ent realms of experience and roams at will throughthe undifferentiated potentiality of the void.Michael’s sources are full of images of water,

which transcend the normal chronological andmaterial restrictions. A passage in the Zhuangzi(ZZ 7, 3:17.b-18b), for example,

. . . is especially noteworthy not only in that it

regards these watery worlds as in some sense

cosmologically prior to the formation of

Heaven and Earth, but also because it makes

clear that these prior realms continue to be

accessible to certain human beings. To gain

access to these realms allows one to attain a

physiological experience of the pristine Dao

itself. (19) The literary conventions that lie

behind this require further investigation.

Michael argues that the early Daoists believedthe disorder in the Human realm has disrupted thenatural order of the cosmos. He accordinglypostulates a second order harmony, in which thesage brings about a latter day re-ordering of therealms of ‘‘Heaven – the Human – Earth’’ inaccordance with its original order. The messianicaspects of this argument are troubling. It is not

clear that the sage is saving humanity or redeemingthe world in any Christian sense. The abstractelements at the core of the Daoist theology fit morenaturally with the aspirations of Buddhism.The civil struggles in the period of the Warring

States led certain Chinese thinkers to reject theepistemological distinctions that provide the basisof ordinary human discourse. The sage grasps theround virtues, not the edged; he grasps the whole.This finds expression in an increasingly physicaltreatment of the Dao and the ‘total identification’of the body of the sage ‘with the world’. (138)The ‘foundational’ human body becomes a micro-cosm that gives the Sage access to everything thatexists.The supreme goal is achieved when a person is

able to locate and embody the Dao in his or herown body, in this very world. (109) This merges the‘that-which-is’ in the ‘that-which-is-not’, where thetrue Sage apparently resides.The Pristine Dao reads more like a source-book

than anything else. The initial justification thatMichael advances is that the book improves uponearlier attempts at classification. It thereforeprovides a more accurate account of what ishappening in early Daoism. The argument islost in the details, however. The book has anexpository side and often seems to serve primarilyas a hermeneutical aid, which allows the author tointerpret these texts on a personal level.The subject-matter of the book is compelling.

since it deals with one of the primary philosophicaldevelopments in human history – the very idea ofthe Dao. A simple historical account would havebeen easier to follow, however, and less diffuse.From a philosophical perspective, we need anotherbook on the pristine Dao, which deals morerigorously with the account of being at the heartof the Daoist enterprise.

St Thomas University,Fredericton, Canada

Paul Groarke

A Jesuit in the Forbidden City: Matteo Ricci 1552–1610. By R. Po-chia Hsia. Pp. xiv, 359, Oxford UniversityPress, 2010, d 30.00.

Edwin Erle Spanks Professor of History, ReligiousStudies and Asian Studies at the PennsylvaniaState University, R. Po-chia Hsia launched hisimpressive scholarly career with important mono-graphs on the Reformation, Protestant andCatholic. More recently he has concentrated onJesuit missions to the Far East. He edited NoblePatronage and Jesuit Missions: Maria Theresia vonFugger-Wellenburg (1690–1762) and Jesuit Mis-sionaries in China and Vietnam (Rome, 2006) in the

prestigious Monumenta Historica Societatis Iesuseries, and has now written the most completeEnglish biography based on primary sources inChinese and Western languages.The author’s familiarity with the Catholic

Reformation, and with Chinese religious andphilosophical culture gives him privileged accessto the worlds in which Ricci was formed and inwhich he worked. In Rome Ricci ‘breathed theair of Catholic culture, christianitas, if one will:

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