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The More He Gives, the More He Has

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The More He Gives, the More He Has

The second half of the chapter states the book's economics of generosity, and it does so in a form that is easy to read as sentimental and is not.

The sage does not hoard: the more he does for others the more he has, and the more he gives to others the more he possesses.

The claim only works because of what the book means by possessing. Nothing here suggests that goods given away return in kind. What accumulates is the thing the text calls power, the efficacy a person has by being what they are, and chapter thirty-eight has already established that this cannot be held on to: the highest power is not powerful and so has power, and the lowest never lets go and so has none. On that account a store is precisely what reduces the holding, and giving is what leaves the position clear.

The chapter closes with two parallel clauses that are as close as the book comes to a summary. The way of heaven benefits and does not harm. The way of the sage acts and does not contend.

They are worth reading as a pair. The first describes a pattern in the world and denies that it costs anything to anybody. The second describes a person and denies not that he acts but that he competes, which is the distinction the whole text turns on. Non-action was never inactivity, and the last sentence of the book says so plainly after eighty chapters of paradox.

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