Chapter XLVIII
CHAPTER XLVIII.
The pursuit of study brings daily increase; the pursuit of Tao daily decrease; decrease upon decrease, until non-action is reached, whence all action proceeds. 1
Only continued non-concern will win the Empire; where there is concern there is an insufficiency for the task.
As mere outwardness retreats the true inwardness is discerned. Beware lest intellectual evolution become spiritual devolution. God has chosen "the things that are not, that He might bring to naught the things that are." Study brings daily increase, the Tao daily decrease, until non-action is reached. The force with which men of violence seize the Kingdom of God is not the self-assertion of the passions, but that mystic force which does violence to the lower nature, plucks out the right eye, or cuts off the right foot. This philosophy is not concerned lest it suffer wrong, or be defrauded of right, knowing that only continued non-concern will win the Empire.
"Surely," says Thomas à Kempis, "an humble husbandman that serveth God is better than a proud philosopher who, neglecting himself, is occupied in studying the course of the heavens."