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CH. III.
INTRODUCTION.
Rendering good
for evil.
chapter: There is nothing in the world more soft and weak than water, and yet for attacking things that are firm and strong there is nothing that can take precedence of it. Every one in the world knows that the soft overcomes the hard, and the weak the strong; but no one is able to carry it out in practice.'
In his sixty-seventh chapter Lâo associates with Humility two other virtues, and calls them his three Precious Things or Lâo's three Jewels. They are Gentleness, Economy, and Jewels. Shrinking from taking precedence of others. 'With that Gentleness,' he says, 'I can be bold; with that Economy I can be liberal; Shrinking from taking precedence of others, I can become a vessel of the highest honour.'
And in his sixty-third chapter, he rises to a still loftier height of morality. He says, '(It is the way of the Tâo) to act without (thinking of) acting, to conduct affairs without (feeling) the trouble of them; to taste without discerning any flavour, to consider the small as great, and the few as many, and to recompense injury with kindness.'
Here is the grand Christian precept, 'Render to no man evil for evil. If thine enemy hunger, feed him; if he thirst, give him drink. Be not overcome with evil, but overcome evil with good.' We know that the maxim made some noise in its author's lifetime; that the disciples of Confucius consulted him about it, and that he was unable to receive it1. It comes in with less important matters by virtue of the Tâoistic rule of contraries.' I have been surprised to find what little reference to it I have met with in the course of my Chinese reading. I do not think that Kwang-jze takes notice of it to illustrate it after his fashion. There, however, it is in the Tâo Teh King. The fruit of it has yet to be developed.
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Second, Lâo laid down the same rule for the policy of the state as for the life of the individual. He says in his sixty-first chapter, 'What makes a state great is its being like a low-lying, down-flowing stream;-it becomes the
1 Confucian Analects, XIV, 36.
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