Ssu-ma T'an and the Six Schools

The third school is that of the Mo chia or Mohist school. This school had a close-knit organization and strict discipline under the leadership of Mo Tzu. Its followers actually called themselves the Mohists. Thus the title of this school is not an invention of Ssu-ma T'an, as were some of the other schools.

The fourth school is the Ming chia or School of Names. The followers of this school were interested in the distinction between, and relation of, what they called "names" and "actualities".

The fifth school is the Fa chia or Legalist school. The Chinese word fa means pattern or law. The school derived from a group of statesmen who maintained that good government must be one based on a fixed code of law instead of on the moral institutions which the literati stressed for government.

The sixth school is the Tao-Te chia or School of the Way and its Power. The followers of this school centered their metaphysics and social philosophy around the concept of Non-being, which is the Tao or Way, and its concentration in the individual as the natural virtue of man, which is Te, translated as "virtue" but better rendered as the "power" that inheres in any individual thing. This group, called by Ssu-ma T'an the Tao-Te school, was later known simply as the Tao chia, and is referred to in Western literature as the Taoist school. As pointed out in the first chapter, it should be kept carefully distinct from the Taoist religion.