And in his sixty-third chapter , he rise to a still loftier height of morality. He says, “(It is the way of the Tao ) 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 received it. It comes in with less important matters by virtue of the Taoistic “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 Chuang-tzŭ takes notice of it to illustrate it after his fashion. There, however, it is in the Tao Te Ching . The fruit of it has yet to be developed.
Second, Lao 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 centre to which tend all (the small states) under heaven.” He then uses an illustration which will produce a smile:—“Take the case of all females. The female always overcomes the male by her stillness. Stillness may be considered (a sort of) abasement.” Resuming his subject, he adds, “Thus it is that a great state, by condescending to small states, gains them for itself; and that small states, by abasing themselves to a great state, win it over to them. In the one case the abasement tends to gaining adherents; in the other case, to procuring favour. The great state only wishes to unite men together and nourish them; a small state only wishes to be received by, and to serves, the other. Each gets what it desires, but the great state must learn to abase itself.”