Chapter 28

Three times the chapter gives the same instruction with different terms. Know the male but keep to the female. Know the white but keep to the black. Know honour but keep to disgrace.

The structure is precise and is often lost in summary. It does not say to prefer the female, the black or the disgrace. It says to know the first term and to stay with the second, which requires both and subordinates neither by ignorance. A person who knows only the female has not done what the chapter asks. The recommended position is informed occupation of the lower ground, which is a different thing from simple humility, and it explains why the book can be read as strategy as easily as it can be read as piety.

Each pair delivers a place to stand and a result. The ravine of the world, and constant power that does not leave, and a return to being an infant. The model of the world, and power that does not err, and a return to the limitless. The valley of the world, and power that suffices, and a return to the uncut block.

All three destinations are states before differentiation: an infant, the limitless, an unworked piece of timber. Nothing here is a reward. The chapter treats the whole exercise as a way of getting back to a condition that was already there, which is the same movement chapter forty calls returning and chapter fifty-two calls going back to hold to the mother.

The uncut block is the book's standing figure for what has not yet been specialised, and this chapter is where it is given its clearest treatment. When the block is cut it becomes implements, and the sage who uses them becomes chief of officials, for the greatest cutting does not divide.

The Chinese word is pu, a piece of wood in its natural state before a carpenter has decided what it is for. Its ordinary sense in the language is plainness or simplicity, and the book uses it in both senses at once, which is why the same word can describe a person in chapter fifteen and a political condition in chapter thirty-seven.

The move made here is the interesting one. Cutting is not condemned. Implements are what a block becomes and they are useful, and the sage does not refuse to use them; he becomes the person who administers them. What the chapter says instead is that the greatest cutting does not divide, which is a paradox with a practical content: the best organisation of people into roles is the one that does not sever them from what they were before they had roles.

That is an argument about administration, and it is aimed at a real Warring States problem. Bureaucratic states worked by defining offices and slotting people into them, and the productivity of that arrangement was obvious. The chapter concedes the productivity and warns about the residue: an implement can do one thing and a block can still become anything, and a state made entirely of implements has spent something it cannot recover.