Since through giving to people, one[self] has even more2. [by means of] [more more] ♦The Way of heaven benefits and does not cause harm. The Way of the sage2 acts yet does not strive. Notes Cross-references one who is not virtuous : #27, #49, #62 Way of heaven : #9, #47, #73, #77, #79 no harm : #35, #56, #58, #60, #66 no striving : #3, #8, #22, #66, #68, #73 Appendix – Different Layers of the Dao De Jing While translating the DDJ, I discovered John Emerson’s articles on the possibility of various “layers” within it, based on the presence or absence of certain symbols and “themes” in each chapter. While he was not the first to suggest the presence of multiple layers, of particular interest to me was his comment : “Many of the objections to my method seemed to be objections to the kinds of rough, empirical, non-algorithmic methods best used to disentangle historically confused material.” Having a background in something called pattern recognition, I decided to find out whether or not each chapter could be classified as belonging to these layers based on this purely analytical method. Emerson tentatively identified Early, Middle, Late, Added (very small) and Post-Guodian layers. By definition, the Post-Guodian layer contains at least chapters 67-81, none of which appear in the Guodian source. Building on Emerson’s work, extensive analysis using pattern recognition methods based on the relative frequencies of the symbols in each chapter indicates that the most self-consistent results are obtained when the DDJ is separated into three layers of chapters : Early : 1 4 5 6 7 9 10 13 14 15 16 20 21 23 24 25 28 30 31 32 34 35 37 39 41 44 51 52 55 56 Late : 3 8 12 17 18 19 22 27 29 38 45 46 47 48 49 53 54 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 Post-Guodian : 11 26 33 36 40 42 43 50 67-81 Mixed : 2 Excluding the chapters he identified as Middle (which ended up being assigned very evenly across the other three layers), none of these completely disagree with Emerson’s assignments (except for 52, which is the only entire chapter he considered to be Added), although he assigns some sections of some chapters to other layers. While a significant majority (85%) of the chapters were strongly identified as belonging to their layer (the underlined chapters above), the pattern recognition process did indicate that a few (most notably chapters 24, 45, 46, 59, and 62, and to a lesser extent 8, 22, 30, 39, 44, and 49) may have elements of more than one layer present within them.