Par. 3 is the most frequently quoted of all the passages in our Ching, unless it be the first part of ch. 1. Fishes taken from the deep, and brought into shallow water, can be easily taken or killed; that is plain enough. “The sharp instruments of a state” are not its “weapons of war,” nor its “treasures,” nor its “instruments of government,” that is, its rewards and punishments, though this last is the interpretation often put on them, and sustained by a foolish reference to an incident, real or coined, in the history of the dukedom of Sung. The li chʽi are “contrivances for gain,” machines, and other methods to increase the wealth of a state, but, according to the principles of Laozi, really injurious to it. These should not be shown to the people, whom the Taoistic system would keep in a state of primitive simplicity and ignorance. This interpretation is in accordance with the meaning of the characters, and with the general teaching of Taoism. In no other way can I explain the paragraph so as to justify the place undoubtedly belonging to it in the system. ↩
爲政, “The Exercise of Government.” This exercise should be according to the Tao, doing without doing, governing without government.
The subject of the third paragraph is a feudal prince of the king, and he is spoken of in the first person, to give more vividness to the style, unless the 吾, “I,” may, possibly, be understood of Laozi himself, personating one of them. ↩
論德, “About the Attributes;” of Tao, that is. It is not easy to render Tê here by any other English term than “virtue,” and yet there would be a danger of its thus misleading us in the interpretation of the chapter.
The “virtue” is the activity or operation of the Tao, which is supposed to have come out of its absoluteness. Even Han Fei so defines it here—“Tê is the meritorious work of the Tao.”
In par. 5 we evidently have a resume of the preceding paragraphs, and, as it is historical, I translate them in the past tense; though what took place on the early stage of the world may also be said to go on taking place in the experience of every individual. With some considerable hesitation I have given the subjects in those paragraphs in the concrete, in deference to the authority of Ho-shang Kung and most other commentators. The former says, “By ‘the highest Tê’ is to be understood the rulers of the greatest antiquity, without name or designation, whose virtue was great, and could not be surpassed.” Most ingenious, and in accordance with the Taoistic system, is the manner in which Wu Chʽêng construes the passage, and I am surprised that it has not been generally accepted. By “the higher Tê” he understands, “the Tao,” that which is prior to and above the Tê (上德者, 在德之上, 道也); by “the lower Tê,” benevolence, that which is after and below the Tê which is above benevolence; by “the higher righteousness,” the benevolence which is above righteousness; and by “the higher propriety,” the righteousness which is above propriety. Certainly in the summation of these four paragraphs which we have in the fifth, the subjects of them would appear to have been in the mind of Laozi as thus defined by Wu.
In the reminder of the chapter he goes on to speak depreciatingly of ceremonies and knowledge, so that the whole chapter must be understood as descriptive of the process of decay and deterioration from the early time in which the Tao and its attributes swayed the societies of men. ↩
法本, “The Origin of the Law.” In this title there is a reference to the law given to all things by the Tao, as described in the conclusion of chapter 25. And the Tao affords that law by its passionless, undemonstrative nature, through which in its spontaneity, doing nothing for the sake of doing, it yet does all things.
The difficulty of translation is in the third paragraph. The way in which princes and kings speak depreciatingly of themselves in adduced as illustrating how they have indeed got the spirit of the Tao; and I accept the last epithet as given by Ho-shang Kung, “naveless” (轂), instead of 穀 (= “the unworthy”), which is found in Wang Pi, and has been adopted by nearly all subsequent editors. To see its appropriateness here, we have only to refer back to chapter 11, where the thirty spokes, and the nave, empty to receive the axle, are spoken of, and it is shown how the usefulness of the carriage is derived from that emptiness of the nave. This also enables us to give a fair and consistent explanation of the difficult clause which follows, in which also I have followed the text of Ho-shang Kung. For his 車, Wang Pi has 輿, which also is found in a quotation of it by Huai-nan Tzŭ; but this need not affect the meaning. In the translation of
