Laozi
治大國若烹小鮮。 以道蒞天下，其鬼不神； 非其鬼不神，其神不傷人； 非其神不傷人，聖人亦不傷人。 夫兩不相傷，故德交歸焉。
James Legge
Governing a great state is like cooking small fish.
Let the kingdom be governed according to the Tao, and the manes of the departed will not manifest their spiritual energy. It is not that those manes have not that spiritual energy, but it will not be employed to hurt men. It is not that it could not hurt men, but neither does the ruling sage hurt them.
When these two do not injuriously affect each other, their good influences converge in the virtue (of the Tao).
Victor H. Mair
Ruling a big kingdom is like cooking a small fish. If one oversees all under heaven in accord with the Way, demons have no spirit. It is not that the demons have no spirit, but that their spirits do not harm people. It is not merely that their spirits do not harm people, but that the sage also does not harm them. Now, When neither harms the other, integrity accrues to both.
C. Spurgeon Medhurst
Govern a great state as you would fry a small fish.
Employ the Tao to establish the Empire and the Daemons will display no energy; not that they are devoid of energy, but that they will not use it to man’s detriment; (further) not only will man suffer no hurt from the Daemons but he will not be injured by the sages.
When neither harm, the attributes of the Tao blend and converge. [^1]
Error cannot withstand truth. To practice the constant presence of God is the surest talisman against all evil. To him who dwells “in the secret place of the Most High” it is ever true that he knows neither the evil nor the plague. “No weapon that is formed against thee shall prosper.” (Vid. Psa. xci.)
[^1] With one accord Lao-tzu’s translators condemn this chapter as utterly unintelligible, it may therefore be as well to supply a paraphrase.
As a small fish stewing in the pan will be broken up if it be moved about too much, so will the Empire be fatally injured if its natural development be interfered with. The only safe course is to follow the Tao, That if employed for the regulation of mankind will make everyone a Sage in due course in which case all will be safe from evil. The daemons could harm no one if there were not some affinity between them and the injured, and in like manner the Sages can only benefit those who are akin with themselves. Lao-tzu in the text expresses this by saying that mankind will receive no hurt from the Sages, that is to say they will receive positive good, for the absence of benefits is in itself an injury. When, in a word, the Tao is supreme, man receives neither positive harm from the spiritual forces which surround him, nor negative injury from the Elders of his race, who are ever ready to help all capable of receiving it. Cf. chap. 66.
”Attributes of the Tao” is represented in the Chinese by the character elsewhere translated “Energy.” See index.
Ursula K. Le Guin
Rule a big country the way you cook a small fish.
If you keep control by following the Way, troubled spirits won’t act up. They won’t lose their immaterial strength, but they won’t harm people with it, nor will wise souls come to harm. And so, neither harming the other, these powers will come together in unity.
Note UKLG: Thomas Jefferson would have liked the first stanza. “Troubled spirits” are kwei, ghosts, not bad in themselves but dangerous if they possess you. Waley reads the second stanza as a warning to believers in Realpolitik: a ruler “possessed” by power harms both the people and his own soul. Taking it as counsel to the individual, it might mean that wise souls neither indulge nor repress the troubled spirits that may haunt them; rather, they let those spiritual energies be part of the power they find along the way.