When Heaven and Earth were opened up, all things came into being; when all things came into being, human beings established governance. There is no power that cannot give life but does not kill. Only Heaven and Earth, whose way of killing people cannot bring about life — humans are transformed into goodness, while beasts are transformed into evil. A person who is not good is called a beast.

There was Heaven naturally before there was Earth; there was Earth before there were distinctions; there were distinctions before there was righteousness; there was righteousness before there was instruction; there was instruction before there was the Dao; there was the Dao before there was principle; and there was principle before there were numbers. This cosmological sequence reflects the Taoist understanding of heaven and man as an integrated moral order, not merely a physical cosmos.

It is said that there are darkness, dawn, day, and night. Only then can numbers be established. The moon waxes and wanes once each cycle; the conjunctions and separations of the moon are recorded by numbers — a system of celestial measurement explored in Daoist star lore and the 28 lunar mansions. These four aspects — darkness, dawn, day, night — are all arranged to serve as numerical governance, echoing the numerical cosmology of the 64 hexagrams and 8 trigrams of the Book of Changes.

Governance is wei (衛), meaning protection; beginning and end are called wei. For Laozi, this definition — governance as protection from beginning to end — is the culmination of Taoist political thought, rooted in the formation process of Taoist doctrines across millennia.

Primary sources include the Shoushanige Congshu edition, the Mohaijinju edition, and the Zhengtong Daozang (Taoist Canon) edition.