[Extollager]

I might not have made that point about the Tao as clearly as I should. The Tao is that "entity" whereby one may say, "One ought not to think too highly of oneself," as a meaningful statement and not simply a statement of preference ("I don't like it when people talk like that!").

I think Lovecraft's conservatism may have pulled him towards a recognition of this perennial, real Tao, but at the same time that he did not want to recognize the existence of something standing independently of material causation and the vagaries of human sentiment.

If anyone is interested in this matter of the Tao, he should read C. S. Lewis's little book The Abolition of Man. It is not a work of Christian apologetics, unlike some of Lewis's writings. It is an empirical and logical demonstration of the perdurable moral standard. The Tao is not an "idolized" phantom imagined by men, but rather is integral in man's deliverance from the world of his subjectivity.