So it was that Chaos passed away before light. So did the nameless simplicity of the Tao disappear before knowledge. But it was better that the Chaos should give place to the cosmos. “Heedless” and “Hasty” did a good deed.
I have thus set forth eight characteristics of the Taoistic system, having respect mostly to what is peculiar and mystical in it. I will not conclude my exhibition of it by bringing together under one head the practical lessons of its author for men individually, and for the administration of government. The praise of whatever excellence these possess belongs to Lao himself: Chuang-tzŭ devotes himself mainly to the illustration of the abstruse and difficult points.
First, it does not surprise us that in his rules for individual man, Lao should place humility in the foremost place. A favourite illustration with him of the Tao is water. In his eighth chapter he says:—“The highest excellence is like that of water. The excellence of water appears in its benefiting all things, and in its occupying, without striving to the contrary, the low ground which all men dislike. Hence (its way) is near to that of the Tao .” To the same effect in the seventy-eighth 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 Lao associates with humility two other virtues, and calls them his three Precious Things, or Jewels. They are gentleness, economy, and 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.”