The chapter makes its case from a single observation about storms. A whirlwind does not last a whole morning and a downpour does not last a whole day. Who produces them? Heaven and earth. If even heaven and earth cannot make a violent thing last, a human being certainly cannot.
The argument is unusually explicit for this book. It has a premise drawn from ordinary experience, an identification of the most powerful agent available, and a conclusion drawn a fortiori. Most of the text states patterns and lets the reader assemble the inference; here the inference is laid out.
What it argues against is force, and specifically against the assumption that intensity produces duration. The examples are the two most forceful things in the weather and both are chosen because they are brief. That pairing of violence with brevity runs through the book: chapter thirty says that things which grow strong then grow old, chapter seventy-six lists the firm and strong among the companions of death, and chapter twenty-four has already said that a person taking long strides does not walk far.
The chapter opens with a line that sets the tone for all of it, that nature says little. The phrase is literally about sparse speech, and it connects the weather argument to the book's recurring suspicion of language: the model being recommended is a heaven and earth that act without announcing, and that do not sustain their loudest actions for long.