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Conversations, compact judgments, and the work of learning. Begin with a short exchange, then follow a recurring word across its changing contexts.

Arguments built from questions, analogies, and carefully staged replies. Track the speaker and test how each conclusion follows.

Compressed contrasts and repeated words invite slow reading. This witness retains 恒 in chapter one; other editions may read 常.

Stories change their frame as you read. Follow a small creature, a question, or an unexpected comparison into another perspective.

Learning, ritual, names, and human nature become sustained arguments. Compare an analogy with the claim it is asked to support.

Read arguments about standards, incentives, and persuasion alongside the stories that test them. Distinguish a speaker’s strategy from the compiler’s position.

Compact claims turn on conditions, comparison, and the limits of knowing. Read the literary argument in its historical setting.

Hear repeated phrases, shifting speakers, and changing images. This Mao witness also transmits interpretive prefaces: those are labelled separately from verse.