Chapter 77

The chapter opens with a mechanical image and gets a redistributive argument out of it. The way of heaven is like the drawing of a bow: the high is pressed down and the low is raised up, what has too much is reduced and what has too little is supplemented.

The image is exact and worth visualising. Bringing a bow to full draw means the two limbs move toward each other, the upper coming down and the lower coming up, and the string that was slack is taken in. Nothing is added from outside. The tension is produced entirely by the reduction of one part and the extension of another, and the result is a weapon that works.

From that the chapter states the rule twice, once for heaven and once against human practice. The way of heaven reduces what has too much and supplements what has too little. The way of man is not like this, and reduces what has too little in order to serve what has too much.

That second sentence is the flattest statement of inequality in the book and it is offered as an observation, not as an accusation. Human arrangements move resources upward, and the chapter says so as a matter of how things are done.

The question that follows is the practical one. Who is able to have too much and offer it to the world? The answer given is only one who has the way, which makes the redistribution voluntary and rare rather than a policy anybody could institute.

This chapter, with chapters fifty-three and seventy-five, is why the book has been claimed by readers whose politics have nothing else in common.

Its raw material is genuinely radical. Human arrangements take from those who have too little to serve those who have too much, and the pattern of heaven does the reverse. Read on its own that is a statement about structural inequality, and modern readers have taken it as one.

The chapter does not turn it into a programme, and the reason is in the last lines. The sage acts without depending, completes without dwelling on it, and has no wish to display his worth. What follows the diagnosis is a description of individual conduct, not an instrument of change, and the redistribution is performed by whoever has the way rather than organised by anybody.

That combination has allowed the text to be read in several directions at once, and its reception bears this out. It has been read as counsel for sovereigns, and quoted at court for centuries. It has been read as a manual of withdrawal by people leaving public life. It has been read as scripture by an organised religion with temples and a priesthood. It has been read as a critique of law, hierarchy and the state, and translated into that register in the modern era. And it has been read as a book about personal tranquillity by an enormous number of people with no interest in any of the above.

All five readings can point at chapters. This one supports the fourth as clearly as chapter sixty-two supports the first.