People rarely see living elephants, yet they obtain the bones of dead elephants and imagine the living creature from their shape. Hence whatever people conceive in imagination is called an “image.”
Now the Dao cannot be heard or seen directly, but sages observe its manifest effects to infer its form. Hence the saying: “The form of the formless, the image of the imageless.”
Note
This passage offers an epistemological rule: the invisible Dao cannot be directly perceived, yet may be inferred from its tangible effects, just as a living elephant is imagined from its bones.
Late Warring‑States Legalist philosopher. This passage is excerpted from Explaining Laozi (Jie Lao), his commentary on the Dao De Jing. He uses the elephant‑bone analogy to explain how to know the invisible Dao through visible real‑world outcomes.
Elephant‑Bone Analogy
A famous Han‑Fei metaphor: invisible truth can be known through tangible traces and effects, just as a living elephant is imagined from dead bones.
Form‑of‑the‑Formless
A core Daoist concept about the shapeless Dao. Han Fei gives it an empirical interpretation: the Dao is unobservable yet knowable via its real‑world functions.
Legalist Empiricism
Han Fei shifts abstract Daoist mysticism toward practical reasoning: judge invisible principles by visible results, a key Legalist epistemology.
人希見生象也，而得死象之骨，案其圖以想其生也，故諸人之所以意想者皆謂之象也。今道雖不可得聞見，聖人執其見功以處見其形，故曰：「無狀之狀，無物之象。」
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