Chapter 42
Taoism — Lao-tzu and the Unnameable Way · text: Translated by James Legge (Sacred Books of the East, 1891) — Project Gutenberg eBook #216, 'The Tao Teh King' (public domain). Highlighted passages are answered beneath the text.
1The Tao produced One; One produced Two; Two produced Three; Three produced All things. All things leave behind them the Obscurity (out of which they have come), and go forward to embrace the Brightness (into which they have emerged), while they are harmonised by the Breath of Vacancy. ★ REFUTED
Taoist cosmology generates the universe by arithmetic emanation: Tao, One, Two, Three, all things — no maker, no word, no purpose. Genesis is not vaguer but clearer: 'In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth'; 'God said, Let there be light: and there was light.' Creation is the act of a personal God, and man is its crown, made in God's image — not an efflux of an unnamed principle.
2What men dislike is to be orphans, to have little virtue, to be as carriages without naves; and yet these are the designations which kings and princes use for themselves. So it is that some things are increased by being diminished, and others are diminished by being increased.
3What other men (thus) teach, I also teach. The violent and strong do not die their natural death. I will make this the basis of my teaching.