You can recognize the highest virtuousness
because it never places itself on display.
You can readily recognize the lowest virtuousness
because it is always announcing itself.
The highest virtue quietly serves universal needs.
The lowest virtue actively strives for personal success.
The highest morality serves common needs.
The lowest morality is self-serving.
True benevolence
acts without intention.
But when rituals go unheeded,
they are enforced with rolled-up sleeves.
Failing the Great Integrity, we resort to virtuousness.
Failing virtuousness, we resort to moralizing.
Failing moralizing, we resort to dogma,
the most superficial form of faith and loyalty,
and the nourishment for confusion.
Natural persons are attracted
to substance rather than form,
to the nutritious fruit rather than the enticing flower,
to that which dwells deeply within,
rather than to that which clings superficially to the surface.
“The Tao Te Ching, A New Translation”
By: Ralph Alan Dale
ISBN: 0-7607-4998-1