Such assertions startle us by their contrariety to our observation and experience, but so does most of the teaching of Taoism. What can seem more absurd than the declaration that “the Tao does nothing, and so there is nothing that it does not do?” And yet this is one of the fundamental axioms of the system. The thirty-seventh chapter , which enunciates it, goes on to say, “If princes and kings were able to maintain (the Tao ), all things would of themselves be transformed by them.” This principle, if we can call it so, is generalised in the fortieth , one of the shortest chapters, and partly in rhyme:⁠—