Nurturing Virtue
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道生之，德畜之，物形之，勢成之。是以萬物莫不尊道而貴德。道之尊，德之貴，夫莫之命而常自然。故道生之，德畜之，長之育之，成之熟之，養之覆之。生而不有，為而不恃，長而不宰，是謂玄德。
The Way gives life to them, Virtue nurtures them, things take their form, and circumstance completes them. So of the ten thousand things, none fails to honor the Way and prize Virtue. The Way is honored and Virtue is prized, yet no one orders it, and it always comes of itself. So the Way gives life to them, and Virtue nurtures them; it raises them and rears them, completes them and ripens them, feeds them and shelters them. It gives life but does not possess; it acts but does not expect reward; it raises but does not rule. This is called the Dark Virtue.
How the Way and its Virtue raise the ten thousand things without ever claiming them.
The Dark Virtue is selfless care: the Way gives life, nurtures and shelters, and none of it ever turns into ownership or control.
The six-beat catalog of care has a real textual variant. Wang Bi’s middle pair of verbs (亭/毒, “steady/temper”) differs from Heshang Gong’s (成/熟, “complete/ripen”), and each edition keeps the same rhythm while filling it with different words.
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