This is the sense (though doubtless not the only sense) in which we may interpret the symbols of 'water' and 'the feminine' so dear to the early Taoist schools ..."

"Thus the Tao Tê Ching:

'The highest good is like that of water. The goodness of water is that it benefits the ten thousand creatures, yet itself does not wrangle, but is content with the places that all men disdain. It is this that makes water so near to the Tao'

Water is yielding and assumes the shape of whatever vessel it is placed in, it seeps and soaks through invisible crevices, its mirror-like surface reflects all Nature..."

"If it were not unthinkable (from the Chinese point of view) that the Yin and Yang could ever be separated, one might say that Taoism was a Yin thought-system and Confucianism a Yang one.

But this inseparability is well demonstrated by one of the basic conceptions common to all schools; the feminine yieldingness of masculine ownership, expressed in the word jang. The dictionary maning of this word is to yield up, to cede, to give up the better place, hence to invite..."

(Needham II)