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Source Materials About Freedom

道者萬物之奧。
善人之寶;
不善人之所保。

1. Dào has of all things the most honoured place.
    No treasures give good men so rich a grace;
    Bad men it guards, and doth their ill efface.

美言可以市;尊行可以加人。人之不善,何棄之有。

2. (Its) admirable words can purchase honour; (its) admirable deeds can raise their performer above others. Even men who are not good are not abandoned by it.

故立天子,置三公,雖有拱璧,以先駟馬,不如坐進此道。

3. Therefore when the sovereign occupies his place as the Son of Heaven, and he has appointed his three ducal ministers, though (a prince) were to send in a round symbol-of-rank large enough to fill both the hands, and that as the precursor of the team of horses (in the court-yard), such an offering would not be equal to (a lesson of) this Dào, which one might present on his knees.

古之所以貴此道者何?不曰以求得,有罪以免耶?故為天下貴。

4. Why was it that the ancients prized this Dào so much? Was it not because it could be got by seeking for it, and the guilty could escape (from the stain of their guilt) by it? This is the reason why all under heaven consider it the most valuable thing.

Legge's Comments

為道, 'Practising the Dào.' 貴道, 'The value set on the Dào,' would have been a more appropriate title. The chapter sets forth that value in various manifestations of it.

Par. 1. For the meaning of , see Confucian Analects, III, ch. 13.

Par. 2. I am obliged to adopt the reading of the first sentence of this paragraph given by Huáinán, 美言可以市尊行可以加人;—see especially his quotation of it in XVIII, 10 a, as from a superior man, I have not found his reading anywhere else.

Par. 3 is not easily translated, or explained. See the rules on presenting offerings at the court of a ruler or the king, in vol. xxvii of the 'Sacred Books of the East,' p. 84, note 31, and also a narrative in the Zuǒ zhuàn under the thirty-third year of duke Xī.


  1. The note reads: "The whip and strap carried up to the hall represented the carriage and horses left in the courtyard". [Freedom Circle note] ↩︎