Chapter 9

Chapter nine is a sequence of four practical observations followed by a conclusion, and it is among the most immediately usable passages in the book.

Filling a vessel to the brim is worse than stopping in time, because a full vessel spills. Grind a blade too keen and the edge will not last, because a fine edge is fragile. A hall full of gold and jade cannot be guarded, because wealth attracts what takes it. Wealth and rank held with arrogance bring their own ruin, because arrogance produces enemies.

None of these is mysterious. Each is a case of a good thing pursued past the point where it remains good, and in each the failure is produced by the excess itself rather than by bad luck. The chapter is making a claim about limits: that most goods have an optimum well short of the maximum, and that the damage from overshooting is not incidental but structural.

The idea recurs throughout the book. Chapter forty-four asks whether the loss from hoarding is worth the gain. Chapter forty-six names not knowing what is enough as the greatest calamity. Chapter thirty says that things which grow strong then grow old, and calls that contrary to the way.

What makes chapter nine distinctive is that it argues entirely from ordinary experience, without invoking the way at all until its final line.

The last line of chapter nine is the one that has had a political career: withdraw when the work is done, for that is the way of heaven.

In the context in which the book was assembled this was not abstract advice. A minister who had served a ruler successfully was in a precarious position, since a subordinate with proven ability and accumulated credit is a threat, and the histories of the period are full of officials who won a war and were executed shortly afterwards. The counsel to leave at the moment of success was a survival strategy with a body count behind it.

The line was taken that way for centuries, and the figure of the official who resigns at the peak of his career and disappears into private life became a recognised ideal in Chinese political culture, with the Tao Te Ching as its standard citation.

The philosophical version is broader. An action is not complete when its object is achieved; it is complete when the actor stops. Continuing past that point turns the achievement into a position that has to be defended, which is a different and worse situation than the one the action was meant to produce. Chapter two says the same thing about merit that is not dwelt on, and chapter thirty says it about a general who achieves the result and does not press on.

It is also one of the few pieces of advice in the book that can be followed directly, which may be why it stuck.