第4章 · 原文
现代白话译文
道是虚空的，但使用它却是无穷无尽的。深邃啊！它好像是万物的宗主。消磨它的锐气，解除它的纷扰，调和它的光辉，混同于尘垢。深沉啊！它好像存在着。我不知道它是谁的后代，似乎在天帝之前就存在了。
英文译本 / English Translations
D.C. Lau
The way is empty, yet use will not drain it. Deep, it is like the ancestor of the myriad creatures. Blunt the sharpness; Untangle the knots; Soften the glare; Let your wheels move only along old ruts. Darkly visible, it only seems as if it were there. I know not whose son it is. It images the forefather of God.
Robert Henricks
1. The Way is empty; 2. Yet when you use it, you never need fill it again. 3. Like an abyss! It seems to be the ancestor of the ten thousand things. 4. If files down sharp edges; 5. Unties the tangles; 6. Softens the glare; 7. And settles the dust. 8. Submerged! It seems perhaps to exist. 9. We don't know whose child it is; 10. It seems to have [even] preceded the Lord.
Addiss & Lombardo
The Way is empty, used but not used up. Deep, it's like the ancestor of the ten thousand things. Blunt the sharp, untie the knotted, harmonize the bright, mix with the dust. A living presence, dim and dark—I don't know whose child it is, but it comes before God.
Arthur Waley
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 soothed. 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 it existed before the Ancestor.
林语堂
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Stephen Mitchell
The Tao is like a well: used but never used up. It is like the eternal void: filled with infinite possibilities. It is hidden but always present. I don't know who gave birth to it. It is older than God.