A chapter about why excellence looks flawed. The greatest perfection seems incomplete, yet its usefulness is never exhausted; the greatest fullness seems empty, yet is never spent. The polished-looking thing is finished — closed, complete, done growing; the truly great thing keeps an apparent deficiency open, and through that opening its use flows forever. So too the persons: the greatest straightness seems bent, the greatest skill seems clumsy, the greatest eloquence seems to stammer. Mastery at its height stops performing mastery.
The chapter closes by choosing between two remedies: activity overcomes cold; stillness overcomes heat — motion fixes some things, but for the world's fevers, its agitation and conflict and haste, the cure is the other one: pure stillness is the right order of the world. The verse gathers the book's aesthetics into a single trust — that the imperfect-looking, quiet, unhurried way of doing things is not a compromise with excellence but its highest form.
Key verses
The greatest perfection seems incomplete, yet its usefulness is never exhausted. The greatest fullness seems empty, yet its usefulness is never spent. The greatest straightness seems bent; the greatest skill seems clumsy; the greatest eloquence seems to stammer. Activity overcomes cold; stillness overcomes heat. Pure stillness is the right order of the world.
Read Chapter 45 in full
Every verse with translation, word meanings, and commentary — free.
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