Excluding the chapters he identified as Middle (which ended up being assigned very evenly across the other three layers), none of these completely disagree with Emerson’s assignments (except for 52, which is the only entire chapter he considered to be Added), although he assigns some sections of some chapters to other layers. While a significant majority (85%) of the chapters were strongly identified as belonging to their layer (the underlined chapters above), the pattern recognition process did indicate that a few (most notably chapters 24, 45, 46, 59, and 62, and to a lesser extent 8, 22, 30, 39, 44, and 49) may have elements of more than one layer present within them.

Note that while Emerson’s names (Early, Late, Post-Guodian) are kept for convenience, they don’t necessarily have to indicate separation in time – they could perhaps represent different oral traditions, or sayings that originally developed in different regions of China, which combined to form the Dao De Jing we know today. Also note that the Guodian document (~300 BCE) consists of chapters from both Early and Late in roughly equal numbers, so this “layering” actually happened very early.

Although chapter 40 was identified as being strongly Post-Guodian, it is present in the Guodian manuscript, but that is not considered a major problem. For example, if perhaps the post-Guodian “style” was already being developed at the time the Guodian document was created, then the presence of chapter 40 in the document could mean that it had already been written in this style, perhaps shortly before the Guodian document was created, whereas chapters 68-81 had yet to be written (or the Guodian compiler was not aware of their existence). There are probably many other scenarios that could explain such a result.

Chapter 2 was variously classified as belonging to all three layers, but the symbol distributions (below) simultaneously indicated that it cannot belong to any of them! If any chapter is truly a mixture of layers, it is this one (which Emerson agrees with), so it is not assigned to any.

With the chapters separated as given above, it is possible to identify which symbols are used more often in one layer than another, as shown in the table below. Each line represents one symbol, and shows its various English meanings (as used in this translation). “Weak” symbols show up three to six times more often in the indicated layer than the other two, while “Strong” symbols show up more than six times more often. Within these sections, symbols are ordered from the least unbalanced to most unbalanced distributions between the layers. “Unique” symbols show up only in that layer, and not even once in the others. In these sections, words are listed from fewest appearances to most appearances. Weak and Strong symbols must show up in at least five chapters to be included, while Unique symbols must be in at least three chapters. Phrases (two or more symbols) are shown in italics. Some punctuation symbols are included as they tend to show differences in grammatical conventions between the layers. Where two symbols are consistently translated into the same punctuation, (#1) and (#2) are used to distinguish between them.

Mostly Early Mostly Late Mostly Post-Guodian
Weak valley call, say, speak return self deep mystery, deep and mysterious mother child, children fill, full maintain, protect do not act truth, honest, trust* affairs, duties, trouble honest and just non-action kind, kindness* wise, wisdom* heart/mind strong, inflexible, try originally, undoubtedly, firm, strong soft, softness, yielding dare, daring Dao of
Strong ! (#1) name, fame, reputation choose, take, take hold of 100 weak, weakness victory, conquer die, death
Unique ? (#1) army blended, mingled pure and clear clear, pure, bright newborn infant hard work unfortunate, bad nobles (specifically Marquis) within, middle exist, survive, keep disgrace without-name same, sameness stop, rest, stay ? (#2) no danger gateway image heaven & earth rare goods abandon non-interference family morality* clever, skillful bandit, evil thief, robbery confuse, confusion treasure hard teach, teaching

The symbol for “die, death” that is strongly Post-Guodian is in only one non-Post-Guodian chapter (6, where the “spirit of the valley does not die”). All of the other 17 times (!) it is used is in Post-Guodian chapters, so if it wasn’t for the one use in chapter 6, this symbol would be strongly unique to the Post-Guodian chapters.

Symbols that show up much more often in two layers but rarely in the other one are presented in the table on the following page, in the same format as the previous one. Symbols in the “Never” sections appear about equally often in the other two layers, but not once in the indicated layer.

“Dao” is almost three times more likely to appear in Early and Late than Post-Guodian (and there almost always as “Dao of”), but not quite enough to make it into the following table (under “Rarely in Post-Guodian”).

Rarely in Early Rarely in Late Rarely in Post-Guodian
Weak govern behavior, perform, travel virtue, good(ness), skilled ! (#2) sage weapons who, which ready, would, about to, general create, life, produce one De
Strong benefit, profit, sharp nation citizens thus the sage
Never virtuous person misfortune serious, double easy do not strive difficult, hard Qi good fortune scholar since, once maintain, protect master depend on, concerned with rare, few do not know 100 families female ocean, sea subtle mystery spirit bright, brightness empty arise, make move, movement, action begin, beginning arise, produce, go out !,? uncarved block not (非)