 The Daode jing discusses three main subjects: the Dao, the saint (or the realized person), and the ruler and his government. Several early Chinese traditions speak of a Dao, or “Way”, but the Daode jing is the earliest source that uses this word to designate the origin and source of existence. As the absolute principle, the Dao is beyond description or definition. It does not even have a name: the word dao is used only because one “is forced” to refer to it (sec. 25). [Here and below, references are to the number of section in the 81-section editions of the text, a subdivision also adopted in most translations into Western languages.] Being formless, the Dao is “constant” (chang, 1), does not undergo change (41), and is “invisible”, “inaudible”, and “imperceptible” (14). Yet the Dao contains an “essence” (jing) that is the seed of its self-manifestation (21), which occurs without intention and through “non-doing” (wuwei; 37). The faculty through which the Dao manifests itself, and generates and nourishes all individual entities, is its de, or “virtue, power”, the second term in the title of the Daode jing. Under this aspect, the Dao is called the “beginning” of the world and its “mother” (1). The two aspects of the Dao—the absolute and its manifestation as the relative—“come forth together”, and their coexistence is “mystery and then again mystery” (1).