The Great Virtue Follows the Tao Alone
Describes true virtue as having no independent content of its own, existing only as the faithful expression of the elusive, formless Tao that stands behind it.
Chapter 21 opens by defining virtue relationally rather than by listing what it contains: "the content of great virtue follows the Tao and the Tao alone." Rather than treating virtue as a separate set of good qualities a person cultivates, the chapter makes it entirely derivative — virtue is simply what the Tao looks like when it shows up in conduct, with nothing added and nothing of its own. It then describes the Tao itself in deliberately elusive language, "elusive and vague," yet containing images within the vagueness and forms within the elusiveness, and, "deep and obscure," containing an essence that is "very real," something reliable within it. The chapter closes by asking how one can know the shape of all things from ancient times to the present, and answers: through this — through the Tao itself, still operating unchanged, the same then as now. It's a compact statement that ethical conduct, in Taoist terms, isn't a separate department of life to be perfected on its own, but a direct readout of how well one is tracking something larger and less definable.
The content of great virtue follows the Tao and the Tao alone.
Tao Te Ching