Customs in Decline
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大道廢，有仁義；智惠出，有大偽；六親不和，有孝慈；國家昏亂，有忠臣。
When the great Way was abandoned, there came benevolence and righteousness; when cleverness and favor-seeking came out, there came great hypocrisy; when the six kin were not in harmony, there came filial piety and parental love; when the state and its families fell into confusion and disorder, there came loyal ministers.
Each named virtue (benevolence, filial piety, loyalty) is shown to appear only after the deeper thing it stands in for has already failed.
A virtue appears only once its opposite condition has set in. The virtues are fine in themselves; their visibility is diagnostic, a symptom of what has already been lost.
Heshang Gong reads 惠, paired with cleverness, in its ordinary sense of currying favor rather than as a stand-in for “wisdom” (慧, what Wang Bi's parallel text has): a ruler who prizes fine words over inner virtue. The critique of appearances is the same, with a slightly different target.
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