The continuation of the chapter whose opening two sentences are already recorded separately. Legge sets these lines as verse and supplies the parentheses himself. The punctuation of the Chinese is genuinely open here: the same characters can be divided to read 'the nameless is the origin of heaven and earth' or 'naming is the origin', and translators have gone both ways for a thousand years.
Facts
Passage
Text(Conceived of as) having no name, it is the Originator of heaven and earth; (conceived of as) having a name, it is the Mother of all things. Always without desire we must be found, If its deep mystery we would sound; But if desire always within us be, Its outer fringe is all that we shall see. 1 ReferenceTao Te Ching 1 (paragraphs 2-3) 1 Reference Scheme Translation
TranslationThe Texts of Taoism, Part I (Sacred Books of the East, vol. 39) 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
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