*1.  Everyone knows the beautiful to be beautiful – then there is ugliness.

2.   Everyone knows the good to be good – then there is bad.

*3.  Being and nothing produce one another,

4.  difficult and easy perfect one another,

5.  long and short shape one another,

6.  high and low fulfil one another,

7.  tune and accompaniment harmonize with one another,

8.  before and after follow one another  --

9.  these are constants.

*10. Therefore the sage dwells in the service of non-action

11. and practices the teaching without speeches --

12. rousing the myriad creatures but not endangering them,

13. acting for them but not mastering them,.

14. accomplishing the task but not dwelling on it.

15. Just because he doesn’t dwell on it, he never loses it.

Interpretation: This is the familiar “relativist” theme (miscalled “the identity of opposites”). Relatives such as tall and short or good and bad are mutually-defining. You cannot know one without the other, and every tall or good thing  is short or bad in comparison to something taller or better. This does not mean that it is impossible to say that one thing is taller or better than another, but just that the absolutely tall and the absolute good are not actual, or even conceptually possible.

Taoists accepted the subversive import of this idea: every good thing can rightly be interpreted simply as a less-bad thing. This conclusion is not nihilistic, but thoroughly realistic.  (Compare Heraclitus: “The way up and the way down are one and the same”).

The opening aphorism also suggests, consistent with the primitivist vein of Taoism, that “marking” or distinguishing one thing as good inevitably has the effect of marking some other thing as bad,  and that on the net, the new situation is not necessarily better than it had been before the marking was done, since both valuation and devaluation have taken place.

“Tune and accompaniment” in line 7 are not mutually-defining opposites parallel to the other pairs, but that this line does suggest that all of the pairs of opposites are ultimately in harmonious relationship with one another.

“Before and after follow one another” in line 8 is true only on a ring or circle.  The same metaphor is seen in Chuang Tzu’s “Ch’i Wu Lun” and “Yu Yen” chapters, where the translators miss it, and probably traces back to Sun Tzu (Giles tr., Ch. 5, p. 37.)

Crossreferences: Being/Nothing.

"Therefore the Sage..." frequently introduces the last part of the chapter; in some cases, but not necessarily all, it probably represents an editorial addition. Much the same is true of the less common formula "Just because not X, therefore X...." The series of paradoxes seen in lines 3-9 are also similiar to other series seen elsewhere in Lao Tzu: see formulae.

"Beautiful and ugly...." etc: compare Ch. 20 " Between beautiful and ugly -- how great is the distance?"

“Accomplishing the task but not dwelling on it”, etc.: Similar passages are seen in Chs. 10, 17, 34, 51, and 77, as well as in Mo Tzu, Kuan Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lu Shih Ch’un Ch’iu, and other works of the period.

“Without speeches / without words”: Chs.17, 23, 43, 56, 73.

"Tune / accompaniment": Ch. 41.

Text: In line 12 I have substituted “endanger” for its cognate (in Archaic Chinese) “begin”, since otherwise the line made little sense. This is a plausible substitution but is not based on actual textual variants or on commentaries.

This chapter is divisible into three parts, as marked by the asterisks. While the chapter reads reasonably well as it stands, the last section has no particular connection to the first two and consists entirely of phrases and concepts which appear in similiar passages elsewhere. It is reasonable to conclude that the original aphorism was commented upon in two steps. In my rearrangement of the text each of the three parts is put together with similiar passages in groupings which may represent layers of the text.