When natural life is gone, knowledge is lacking.
Thinking and words, the world lacks;
Neither can it know its use.
The full vessel is in the valley,
While its heart, the simple and inexhaustible
May be told of by the country's multitude.
Yet such is the depth of things only
The superficial man can grasp.
other readings further drafts from the same generation
deeper strata where the meaning thins
the original
1. My words are very easy to know, and very easy to practise; but
there is no one in the world who is able to know and able to practise
them.
2. There is an originating and all-comprehending (principle) in my
words, and an authoritative law for the things (which I enforce). It
is because they do not know these, that men do not know me.
3. They who know me are few, and I am on that account (the more) to be
prized. It is thus that the sage wears (a poor garb of) hair cloth,
while he carries his (signet of) jade in his bosom.