Every good action has its reward attached to it.

Hence also the degradation of the system into pure magic and spiritism.

Buddhism, though its course runs so nearly parallel, always retains in its scheme of merits a touch of generosity.
We find thus, in the Tao-te-king, the element afterwards expanded into the system of utilitarian and eudaemonic ethics in the Book of Rewards and Punishments.

We also can trace in it the source of the magical tendency in Tao-ism.

The principle, that by putting one's self into an entirely passive condition one can enter into communion with the unnamed Tao, and so acquire power over nature, naturally tends to magic.