Sacred Texts Taoism Index Previous Next
81. 1. Sincere words are not fine; fine words are not sincere. Those who are skilled (in the Tâo) do not dispute (about it); the disputatious are not skilled in it. Those who know (the Tâo) are not extensively learned; the extensively learned do not know it.
2. The sage does not accumulate (for himself). The more that he expends for others, the more does he possess of his own; the more that he gives to others, the more does he have himself.
3. With all the sharpness of the Way of Heaven, it injures not; with all the doing in the way of the sage he does not strive.
, 'The Manifestation of Simplicity.' The chapter shows how quietly and effectively the Tâo proceeds, and by contraries in a way that only the master of it can understand. The author, says Wû Khäng, 'sums up in this the subject-matter of the two Parts of his Treatise, showing that in all its five thousand characters, there is nothing beyond what is here said.'
Par. 2 suggests to Dr. Chalmers the well-known lines of Bunyan as an analogue of it:--
'A man there was, though some did count him mad,
The more he gave away, the more he had.'
Wû Khäng brings together two sentences from Kwang-dze (XXXIII, 21 b, 22 a), written evidently with the characters of this text in mind, which, as from a Tâoist mint, are a still better analogue, and I venture to put them into rhyme:--
Amassing but to him a sense of need betrays;
He hoards not, and thereby his affluence displays.'
I have paused long over the first pair of contraries in par. 3 (
and
). Those two characters primarily mean 'sharpness' and 'wounding by cutting;' they are also often used in the sense of I being beneficial,' and 'being injurious;'--'contraries,' both of them. Which 'contrary' had Lâo-dze in mind? I must think the former, though differing in this from all previous translators. The Jesuit version is, 'Celestis Tâo natura ditat omnes, nemini nocet;' Julien's, 'Il est utile aux êtres, et ne leur nuit point;' Chalmers's, 'Benefits and does not injure;' and V. von Strauss's, 'Des Himmels Weise ist wolthun und nicht beschddigen.'