Chapter 69 – To Make Light of the Enemy

The strategists say: “I dare not take the offensive but I take the defensive;
I dare not advance an inch but I retreat a foot.”
This means: To march without formation,
To stretch one’s arm without showing it,
To confront enemies without seeming to meet them,
To hold weapons without seeming to have them.
There is no greater disaster than to make light the enemy.
Making light of the enemy will destroy my treasures.
Therefore when armies are mobilized and issues joined,
The man who is sorry over the fact will win. 

Translation by Wing-Tsit Chan (1963)

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Pride goeth before destruction; and a haughty spirit before a fall.

Proverbs 16:18 (King James Bible)

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This is another chapter in which Lao Tzu writes about war.  Most of what is said here is not new.  The Old Master counsels – by quoting “strategists” – that if war is necessary, there should be sufficient preparation, strength comes from yielding, and the side that enters the battle with compassion will be victorious.

Each of those points is discussed elsewhere in the Tao Te Ching, so I would like to keep my focus here very limited.  I want to look at the line that says, “Making light of the enemy will destroy my treasures.”

After the discussion of the strategists’ approach, the emphasis changes in the quoted line.  Lao Tzu does not speak of losing a kingdom or the lives of the combatants or the property of the conquered.  Instead, he says that making light of the enemy will destroy my (that is, the narrator’s, presumably Lao Tzu’s) treasures.  From the placement of that

C. S. Lewis

wording after the discussion in Chapter 67 and then the look at warfare in Chapters 68 and 69, it seems Lao Tzu is referring back to the three treasures of Chapter 67 – compassion, frugality and humility.

In the comments following the post discussing Chapter 67, Bob G argued that the first in importance of those treasures is humility.  The other two can be seen as arising from the practice of humility.  Bob is not the only one who has felt that way.  Another is the late British author, C. S. Lewis; and I would like to present a rather lengthy quote from Lewis’s book, Mere Christianity, which is available as a free ebook.  The presentations in that book were originally a series of radio broadcasts delivered during the bombing of London in World War II.  He says: Continue reading →