道術將為天下裂
The Way Will Be Torn Apart
天下大亂，賢聖不明，道德不一。天下多得一察焉以自好。譬如耳目鼻口，皆有所明，不能相通。猶百家眾技也，皆有所長，時有所用。雖然，不該不遍，一曲之士也。判天地之美，析萬物之理，察古人之全。寡能備於天地之美，稱神明之容。是故內聖外王之道，暗而不明，郁而不發，天下之人各為其所欲焉以自為方。悲夫！百家往而不反，必不合矣！後世之學者，不幸不見天地之純，古人之大體。道術將為天下裂。
The world fell into great disorder. The worthy and the sagely were no longer clear. The Way and its virtue were no longer unified. Many in the world grasped one aspect of it and considered it a prize. It was like the ear, the eye, the nose, and the mouth: each has its own kind of perception, but they cannot substitute for one another. It is the same with the many skills of the hundred schools — each has its strengths, each has its uses. But they are not comprehensive, not all-embracing; each is a specialist of one corner. They divide up the beauty of heaven and earth, dissect the principles of the myriad things, and fragment the wholeness of the ancients. Rarely can anyone encompass the full beauty of heaven and earth or describe the true capacity of the spirit and the luminous. Therefore the Way of inner sagehood and outer kingliness became dim and unclear, blocked and unexpressed, and everyone in the world did as they pleased and made themselves their own authority. How sad! The hundred schools go their separate ways and never come back. They can never be reunited! The scholars of later ages, unfortunately, will never see the purity of heaven and earth or the great unity of the ancients. The Way will be torn apart by the world.
Notes
Chapter 33 is the earliest surviving history of Chinese philosophy, surveying the major schools of thought — Mohists, the School of Names, Legalists, and others — and evaluating them from a Daoist perspective. Its lament that the Way has been 'torn apart' (裂) by competing schools establishes the Zhuangzi as a text that aspires to recover a primordial wholeness that transcends all partial perspectives.