Fake Lao Tzu Quote

"Music in the soul..."

This is NOT a quote from Tao Te Ching:

"Music in the soul can be heard by the universe."

The Book Tao Te Ching The Taoism of Lao Tzu Explained. The great Taoist philosophy classic by Lao Tzu translated, and each of the 81 chapters extensively commented. Click the image to see the book at Amazon (paid link).        More about the book here.

This cryptic statement has a poetic flare that inspires contemplation — but as a Lao Tzu quote, three of its words raise questions: music, soul, and universe. Neither of them fits his vocabulary that well.

       As for music, Lao Tzu seems not to have given it much thought. The word appears only once in Tao Te Ching, and that's in passing. It's in chapter 35 (my version):

Music and food make the traveler halt.
But words spoken about the Way have no taste.

       So, Lao Tzu stated that music has no significance in the grand scale of things.

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       The soul, as we know it, is mainly a concept of Christian belief. Lao Tzu did not separate the mind into different entities, and regarded it as completely locked to the body. There is no claim of an afterlife in Tao Te Ching.

       In my version of the text, the word is mentioned only once, and I think I should really have used some other term — if I could find one more accurate. It is at the start of chapter 10, where Lao Tzu lists abilities that a true sage should have:

Can you make your soul embrace the One
And not lose it?

       Other translations also use "soul" and D. C. Lau had this explanation of it in a footnote (page 66):

Man has two souls, the p'o which is the soul of the body and the hun which is the soul of the spirit. After death, the p'o descends into earth while the hun ascends into heaven.

       That may sound like some kind of afterlife, or actually two, but Lao Tzu did not make any other mention of it, nor did he seem the least bit interested in supernatural beliefs of ancient China regarding human immortality. Well, with one additional exception, in chapter 60 (my version):

When the world is ruled according to the Way,
The ghosts lose their power.
The ghosts do not really lose their power,
But it is not used to harm people.

       The ghosts were kuei, restless spirits of deceased ancestors.

       Thirdly, the word universe implies an understanding of a vast space in which our planet is in no way the middle, nor the place where it all began. In the time of Lao Tzu, that would be a stretch of the imagination, indeed. He spoke about the world, meaning the earth we walk on and the heaven we see when we look up. And this world he spoke about a lot, certainly.

       But even with a wording more accurate to Lao Tzu's understanding, some kind of internal music heard by the world would make little sense to him — or us. Is it a hint at telepathy of some sort? Or should it be interpreted as symbol for inner joy, concluding that happiness is contagious?

       I think Lao Tzu would frown at the idea. Although obviously humorous, he was no entertainer. In his world, events were caused by people's actions, not their moods.

       The origin of this quote is a difficult one to trace. The first mention of it I found on Facebook is from July 21, 2009, accrediting it to Lao Tzu. Next year it appeared five times, two of which accredited it to Lao Tzu. Since then the quote, with the Lao Tzu reference, has spread modestly on Facebook, increasingly by meme images.

       Slightly earlier, on January 10, 2009, the quote got its first like on the Goodreads website, also accrediting it to Lao Tzu. By now (August 2020) it has received 666 likes, which is a number with its own symbolic significance. A Google search (August 2020) gives almost 70,000 hits with the exact wording of the quote.

       There are several printed books containing the exact quote, the oldest of which is Kung Fu Meditations & Chinese Proverbial Wisdom, by Ellen Kei Hua, first published in 1973 and revised 1974. A major part of the book consists of 41 quotes called "meditations," where the 37th is the quote discussed here.

       Unfortunately there is no source specified for any of the quotes, but the introduction states that Tao Te Ching, Chuang Tzu, I Ching, and "other Chinese and Eastern sages" have been used. Many of the quotes are indeed from Tao Te Ching — but not this one.

       Nor is this quote from Chuang Tzu, but there is something similar in his Book 14, "The Revolution of Heaven," translated by James Legge in 1891 (page 349):

The Perfect Music first had its response in the affairs of men, and was conformed to the principles of Heaven; it indicated the action of the five virtues, and corresponded to the spontaneity (apparent in nature).

       And two pages later in the same Book (page 351) there is something called "the music of Heaven, delighting the mind without the use of words."

       That is still quite far from the quote examined here.

       The expression "music in the soul" has a long history, though. An Internet Archive search brings close to 2,000 books from the year 1800 to the present containing the expression. The English poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) wrote in the ode "Dejection" from Sibylline Leaves, 1817 (page 240):

O pure of heart! thou need'st not ask of me
What this strong music in the soul may be!
What, and wherein it doth exist.
This light, this glory, this fair luminous mist.
This beautiful, and beauty-making power.

       The music he spoke of was his love for a woman who was not his wife. She ended up marrying his colleague William Wordsworth.

       A minimal variation, "music of the soul," brings twice as many results in an Internet Archive book search. To Voltaire, the French 18th century philosopher, that music ("la musique de l'âme") was poetry. He wrote in his Philosophical Dictionary (volume v, 2nd edition, 1824, page 252):

It is asked, why poetry, being so unnecessary to the world, occupies so high a rank among the fine arts? The same question may be put with regard to music. Poetry is the music of the soul, and above all of great and of feeling souls.

       There is also the concept "music of the spheres," musica universalis, of ancient Greek origin, that not only involves the universe, but was said to be played by it. The harmonious orbital movements of the planets were described as a sort of music. Pythagoras even claimed that each made its own sound, or hum.

       But I doubt that any of the philosophers thought that the planets listened to music within the human soul.

More Fake Lao Tzu Quotes

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