The Daodejing's recommendation of the low position is relentless — be the valley of the world, hold to the female, water benefits all things and settles in the places people disdain, the sage puts himself last and so ends up first. The interpretive difficulty, and the tradition has never hidden it, is that the text is addressed to rulers and reads throughout as advice on governing and on warfare. The soft overcoming the hard is offered as a technique that works. The ruler who does not contend ends up unopposed; the one who empties the people's minds and fills their bellies is easier to govern. Whether this makes the humility instrumental and therefore not humility is a genuine question, and Chinese political history supplies plenty of material for it: Legalist thinkers drew directly on Daoist non-action to construct a theory of an unfathomable ruler who does nothing visible while the apparatus operates.