Chapter IV
(Chapter 4)

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Ko Yuen Translation

The Spring Without Source
1. The Tao resembleth the emptiness of Space; to employ it, we must avoid creating ganglia1.  Oh Tao, how vast art Thou, the Abyss of Abysses, thou Holy and Secret Father of all Fatherhoods of Things!
2. Let us make our sharpness blunt2; let us loosen our complexes3; let us4 tone down our brightness to the general obscurity.   Oh Tao, how still art thou, how pure, continuous One beyond Heaven!
3. This Tao hath no Father; it is beyond all other conceptions, higher than the highest.

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S. Mitchell Translation

The Tao is like a well:  used but never used up.
It is like the eternal void:  filled with infinite possibilities.

It is hidden but always present.
I don't know who gave birth to it.
It is older than God.

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James Legge Translation
1. The Tao is (like) the emptiness of a vessel; and in our employment of it we must be on our guard against all fulness.  How deep and unfathomable it is, as if it were the Honoured Ancestor of all things!
2. We should blunt our sharp points, and unravel the complications of things; we should attemper our brightness, and bring ourselves into agreement with the obscurity of others.  How pure and still the Tao is, as if it would ever so continue!
3. I do not know whose son it is.  It might appear to have been before God.

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GNL not Lao Interpolation

Limitless

The Way is a limitless vessel;
Used by the self, it is not filled by the world;
It cannot be cut, knotted, dimmed or stilled;
Its depths are hidden, ubiquitous and eternal;
I don't know where it comes from;
It comes before nature.

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Ko Yuen Commentary
1. See Liber CCXX...I.22, "let there be no difference made among you between any one thing & any other thing."  Inequality (an Illusion) and disorder necessarily result from the departure from homogeneity.

W.E. Heidrick note: Quotation corrected from: "make no difference between any one thing and any other thing"

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2. For sharpness implies a concentration.

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3. For these are the ganglia of thought, which must be destroyed.

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4. On the same principles.  Cf. the Doctrine in CCXX as to the "space-marks".  The stars are blemishes, so to speak, on the continuity of Nuit.

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