中英對照《道德經》

      第一章
　   道可道，非常道；名可名，非常名。
　　無名，天地之始；有名，萬物之母。
　　故常無欲，以觀其妙；常有欲，以觀其徼。
　　此兩者，同出而異名，同謂之玄。
　　玄之又玄，眾妙之門。

Chapter 1
The Way that can be told of is not an Unvarying Way;
The names that can be named are not unvarying names.
It was from the Nameless that Heaven and Earth sprang;
The named is but the mother that rears the ten thousand creatures, each after its kind.
Truly, ’Only he that rids himself forever of desire can see the Secret Essences’ ;
He that has never rid himself of desire can see only the Outcomes.
These two things issued from the same mould, but nevertheless are different in name.
This ’ same mould’ we can but call the Mystery,
Or rather the ’Darker than any Mystery’,
The Doorway whence issued all Secret Essences.


　　第二章　
　　天下皆知美之為美，斯惡已；皆知善之為善，斯不善已。
　　故有無相生，難易相成，長短相形，高下相傾，音聲相和，前後相隨。
　　是以聖人處無為之事，行不言之教，萬物作焉而不辭，生而不有，為而不恃，功成而弗居。夫唯弗居，是以不去。

Chapter2
It is because every one under Heaven recognizes beauty as beauty,that the idea of ugliness exists.
And equally if every one recognized virtue as virtue, this would merely create fresh conceptions of wickedness.
For truly ’Being and Not-being grow out of one another;
Difficult and easy complete one another.
Long and short test one another;
High and low determine one another.
Pitch and mode give harmony to one another.
Front and back give sequence to one another’.
Therefore[1] the Sage relies on actionless activity,
Carries on wordless teaching,
But the myriad creatures are worked upon by him; he does not disown them.
He rears them, but does not lay claim to them,
Controls them, but does not lean upon them,
Achieves his aim, but does not call attention[2] to what he does;
And for the very reason that he does not call attention to what he does
He is not ejected from fruition of what he has done.

[1]Because ’action’ can only make one thing high at the expense of making something else low, etc.
[2]Literally, ’does not place (i.e.classify) himself as a victor’. cf. MenciusⅡ, Ⅰ;


　　第三章　
　　不尚賢，使民不爭；不貴難得之貨，使民不為盜；不見可欲，使民心不亂。
　　是以聖人之治，虛其心，實其腹；弱其誌，強其骨。常使民無知無欲，使夫智不敢為也。為無為，則無不治。

Chapter3
If we stop looking for ’persons of superior morality’ (hsien) to put in power, there will be no more jealousies among the people. If we cease to set store by products that are hard to get , there will be no more thieves. If the people never see such things as excite desire, their hearts will remain placid and undisturbed. Therefore the Sage rules
　　By emptying their hearts
　　And filling their bellies,
　　Weakening their intelligence[1]
　　And toughening their sinews
　　Ever striving to make the people knowledgeless and desireless.
Indeed he sees to it that if there be any who have knowledge, they dare not interfere. Yet through his actionless activity all things are duly regulated.

[1]Particularly in the sense of ’having ideas of one’s own’.


　　第四章　
　　道衝而用之，或不盈。
　　淵兮，似萬物之宗。（挫其銳，解其紛，和其光，同其塵。）湛兮，似或存。
　　吾不知誰之子，象帝之先。

Chapter4
The Way is like an empty vessel
That yet may be drawn from
Without ever needing to be filled.
It is bottomless; the very progenitor of all things in the world.
In it all sharpness is blunted,
All tangles untied,
All glare tempered,
All dust[1] smoothed.
It is like a deep pool that never dries.
Was it too the child of something else? We cannot tell.
But as a substanceless image[2] it existed before the Ancestor.[3]

[1]Dust is the Taoist symbol for the noise and fuss of everyday life.
[2]A hsiang, an image such as the mental images that float before us when we think.
[3]The Ancestor in question is almost certainly the Yellow Ancestor who separated Earth from Heaven and so destroyed the Primal Unity, for which he is frequently censured is Chuang Tzu.