Tao Te Ching by Laozi (reading comprehension books txt) 📕

and showing also how the general decay of manners afforded opportunity for the display of certain virtues by individuals. Observe “the Great Tao,” occurring here for the first time as the designation of “the Tao.” ↩

還淳, “Return to the Unadulterated Influence.” The chapter desires a return to the simplicity of the Tao, and shows how superior the result would be to that of the more developed systems of morals and government which had superseded it. It is closely connected with thte two chapters that precede. Laozi’s call for the renunciation of the methods of the sages and rulers in lieu of his fancied paradisiacal state is repeated ad nauseam by Chuang-tzŭ. ↩

異俗, “Being Different from Ordinary Men.” The chapter sets forth the difference to external appearance which the pursuit and observance of the Tao produces between its votaries and others; and Laozi speaks in it as himself an example of the former. In the last three chapters he has been advocating the cause of the Tao against the learning and philosophy of the other school of thinkers in the country. Here he appears as having renounced learning, and found an end to the troubles and anxieties of his own mind; but at the expense of being misconceived and misrepresented by others. Hence the chapter has an autobiographical character.

Having stated the fact following the renunciation of learning, he proceeds to dwell upon the troubles of learning in the rest of par. 1. Until the votary of learning knows everything, he has no rest. But the instances which he adduces of his are not striking nor easily understood. I cannot throw any light on the four lines about the “yes” and the “yea.”

Confucius (Ana. XVI, viii) specifies three things of which the superior man stands in awe; and these and others of a similar nature may have been the things which Laozi had in his mind. The nursing-mother at the end is, no doubt, the Tao in operation, “with a name,” as in ch. 1; “the mysterious virtue” of chapters 51 and 52. ↩

虛心, “The Empty Heart.” But I fail to see the applicability of the title. The subject of the chapter is the Tao in its operation. This is the significance of the 德 in the first clause or line, and to render it by “virtue,” as Julien and Chalmers do, only serves to hide the meaning. Julien, however, says that “the virtue is that of the Tao;” and he is right in taking 從, the last character of the second line, as having the sense of “from,” “the source from,” and not, as Chalmers does, in the sense of “following.”

Laozi’s mind is occupied with a very difficult subject⁠—to describe the production of material forms of the Tao; how or from what, he does not say. What I have rendered “semblances,” Julien “les images,” and Chalmers, “forms,” seems, as the latter says, in some way to correspond to the “Eternal Ideas” of Plato in the Divine Mind. But Laozi had no idea of “personality” in the Tao. ↩

益謙, “The Increase granted to Humility.” This title rightly expresses the subject-matter of the chapter. I cannot translate the first clause otherwise than I have done. It was an old saying, which Laozi found and adopted. Whether it was intended to embrace all the cases which are mentioned may be questioned, but he employs it so as to make it do so.

“The emptiness” which becomes full is literally the hollowness of a cavity in the ground which is sure to be filled by overflowing water;⁠—see Mencius, IV ii 18. “The worn out” is explained by the withered foliage of a tree, which comes out new and fresh in the next spring. I have taken the first sentence of par. 2 as Wu Chʽêng does;⁠—see his commentary in loc. ↩

虛無, “Absolute Vacancy.” This, I think, is the meaning of the title, “Emptiness and Nothingness,” as entire conformity to the Tao in him who professes to be directed by it. Such a one will be omnipotent in his influence in all others. The Tao in him will restrain all (spasmodic) loquacity. Those who are described in par. 2 as “failing” are not to be thought of as bad men, men given up, as Julien has it, au crime. They are simply ordinary men, who have failed in their study of the Tao and practice of it, but are won to truth and virtue by the man whom the author has in mind. As we might expect, however, the mention of such men has much embarrassed the commentators.

Compare the concluding sentence with the one at the end of par. 1 in ch. 17. ↩

苦恩, “Painful Graciousness.” The chapter should be so designated. This concludes the subject of the two previous chapters⁠—pursuing the course, the course of the unemotional Tao without vain effort or display.

The remnants of food were not used as sacrificial offerings;⁠—see the Li Chi (vol. xxvii p. 82). In what I have rendered by “a tumour attached to the body,” the 行 is probably, by a mistake, for 形;⁠—see a quatation by Wu Chʽêng from Ssŭ-ma Chʽien. “Which all dislike” is, literally, “Things are likely to dislike them,” the “things” being “spirits and men,” as Wu explains the