Tao te Ching: 5

Heaven and Earth are not humane (jen). They regard all things as straw dogs.
The sage is not humane.
He regards all people as straw dogs.
How Heaven and Earth are like a bellows!
While vacuous, it is never exhausted.
When active, it produces even more.
Much talk will of course come to a dead end.
It is better to keep to the center (chung).

How horrible this sounds! We live in a world where humanity is a virtue. Merriam-Webster defines humane as "marked by compassion, sympathy, or consideration for humans or animals." This sounds wonderful. Who would not want a compassionate, sympathetic, and considerate person in their life? Jen is also sometimes translated as benevolence, love, goodness or altruism. This doesn't quite catch it all, because it means specific and general virtue.

Mencius, a follower of the Confucian school, differed mostly in the fact that he considered mankind's true nature to be benevolent. Jen was the mind or perhaps the soul, though neither accurately fit our standard definition. It was supposed to be the motive force. What drove people to move forward and do great works. In fact, the chinese character for jen includes both the character for man and the character for world.

But here Lao Tzu is actually giving us a positive thing about Heaven and Earth. It isn't that their lack of jen makes them cruel and uncaring, but rather it should be read that Heaven and Earth are impartial. I have been meditating on this point for a while, and I am undecided how to work with the phrase "straw dogs." Does this mean that everything is just a simplistic representation of something real? Does it mean that they are all equal and not deserving of special consideration and tending? Both sound plausible. The first seems to apply more to Heaven and Earth and the second seems to apply more to the sage. At least the lack of jen is clear; the sage should be impartial. This procedes nicely from the previous chapters, where Lao Tzu cautions against doing things for the wrong reason, and against celebrating treasures and good works.

We return to hsü again with the bellows analogy. The Tao is a tool, an implement like a bowl, and here he refers to Heaven and Earth as bellows. Vacuous (hsü) bellows that are never exhausted when emptied and produce still more when active. How true is this? How can someone test and gage this use as a tool even in the semantic sense? Hsü isn't emptiness, let us not forget that, but instead a purity of mind and a simplicity of being. Lao Tzu says that Heaven and Earth are also pure and simple, and they lack cunning. Once again, they are impartial. But oh! How much they can accomplish when active! And isn't it true of us as well? When we don't plot and scheme, when we do things without thinking of praise or reward, do we not look back and find those our most productive days? Think about days where the chores lasted all day, but the day simply flew by in a whirl of clock hands.

There is an alternate translation of "Much talk will of course come to a dead end" that I particularly like.

Much talk destroys truth.

When the Apollo astronauts landed on the moon, none except Apollo 17 with Harrison Schmitt was a trained scientist. All had scientific training, of course, but they were all in the military or former military, and that shaped their upbringing. No amount of cram studying could give them the education they needed to be a credible geologist. So was it any wonder that Earthbound geologists were so confused by the descriptions the astronauts gave, or the presumptions they made? Yet, Schmitt was credited with taking the most scientifically interesting lunar sample. He also took the photograph known as The Blue Marble, one of the most beautiful pictures ever taken of our home. There was no talking to try to guide Schmitt to an interesting sample, he simply knew because that was what he did.

The above also applies back to the Nameless. As we talk, we label and identify things. I do it now as I write. The words I write are not the same as the concepts in my mind, which are not the same as the actual thing. Names slowly fail us, in this respect, removing us further and further from the truth.