Note that while Emerson’s names (Early, Late, Post-Guodian) are kept for convenience, they don’t necessarily have to indicate separation in time – they could perhaps represent different oral traditions, or sayings that originally developed in different regions of China, which combined to form the Dao De Jing we know today. Also note that the Guodian document (~300 BCE) consists of chapters from both Early and Late in roughly equal numbers, so this “layering” actually happened very early. Although chapter 40 was identified as being strongly Post-Guodian, it is present in the Guodian manuscript, but that is not considered a major problem. For example, if perhaps the post-Guodian “style” was already being developed at the time the Guodian document was created, then the presence of chapter 40 in the document could mean that it had already been written in this style, perhaps shortly before the Guodian document was created, whereas chapters 68-81 had yet to be written (or the Guodian compiler was not aware of their existence). There are probably many other scenarios that could explain such a result. Chapter 2 was variously classified as belonging to all three layers, but the symbol distributions (below) simultaneously indicated that it cannot belong to any of them! If any chapter is truly a mixture of layers, it is this one (which Emerson agrees with), so it is not assigned to any. With the chapters separated as given above, it is possible to identify which symbols are used more often in one layer than another, as shown in the table below. Each line represents one symbol, and shows its various English meanings (as used in this translation). “Weak” symbols show up three to six times more often in the indicated layer than the other two, while “Strong” symbols show up more than six times more often. Within these sections, symbols are ordered from the least unbalanced to most unbalanced distributions between the layers. “Unique” symbols show up only in that layer, and not even once in the others. In these sections, words are listed from fewest appearances to most appearances. Weak and Strong symbols must show up in at least five chapters to be included, while Unique symbols must be in at least three chapters. Phrases (two or more symbols) are shown in italics. Some punctuation symbols are included as they tend to show differences in grammatical conventions between the layers. Where two symbols are consistently translated into the same punctuation, (#1) and (#2) are used to distinguish between them. Mostly Early Mostly Late Mostly Post-Guodian Weak valley call, say, speak return self deep mystery, deep and mysterious mother child, children fill, full maintain, protect do not act truth, honest, trust* affairs, duties, trouble honest and just non-action kind, kindness* wise, wisdom*