# Arthur Waley publishes The Way and Its Power

Date: 1934

## The fact

In 1934 Arthur Waley issued The Way and Its Power, a complete English Daodejing with an introduction that treats the book as a layered political-mystical text rather than as a prophet’s autograph.

## Context

Waley wrote for a general literary public between the wars. He popularised wuwei as a political idea and also warned against converting legend into biography. Later New Age reprints dropped the warning. Those reprints are later Facts.

Laozi is not the sole author of every later object, law, or museum label that uses the name. Shared work with courts, excavators, printers, spouses, officials, and later states does not erase a documented role, and it does not make an ancient person the signer of a twentieth-century statute.

## Evidence and sources

Internet Archive holds scans of Waley’s book. Britannica’s [Laozi](/people/laozi) article independently treats modern translations as the public English carriers.

Official or archival record: Arthur Waley, The Way and Its Power (scan) (https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.185280; Internet Archive).

## Significance

Knowledge-access path. High confidence on 1934.

A good introduction can be stripped by later paperbacks.

## What is established and what is not

Established: Waley’s book appeared in 1934. Not established: that it reduced later wellness misuse.

What would change the picture: a contradictory original with a different date or name, or a measured series that can be argued, with lag and alternatives, as a consequence of this instrument rather than of later institutions.

The date is the date of this instrument, not a licence to back-date every later harm or benefit.
Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The attached driver is edu-[digital-learning-access](/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access). The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here. Later competitions, monuments, translations, UNESCO listings, and museums are not converted into extra lifetime acts. The welfare reading used in this dossier is improving. That reading is an impact-path choice, not a property stored on the Fact itself. Confidence is stated on the impact path. A later English edition is not a recovered autograph. If a number is not in the two records named above, it is not supplied here.

## People

- Laozi: https://factrail.ai/people/laozi

## Drivers

- Digital Learning Access: https://factrail.ai/drivers/edu-digital-learning-access

## Sources

- https://www.britannica.com/biography/Laozi
- https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.185280

## Methodology

https://factrail.ai/methodology

Canonical: https://factrail.ai/facts/lz-waley-way-power-1934