shén bù shǐ
Also rendered: the spirit does not serve (Literal; keeps 使 as service) · the spirit is unresponsive (Loose; makes 使 intransitive) · the spirit no longer responds to treatment (Expands the gloss)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Qibo’s two-word answer to the hardest question in the chapter, and perhaps in the book: why does a patient with the best physician, the correct methods, and every advantage of nearness and attention still not recover? Because the needle and the stone are only a method; what they work on is the patient’s spirit, and once the spirit will not answer them, no method reaches him. The chapter gives the mechanism at once — appetites without end, cares without stop, and the construction stagnates and the defence is dispelled. It is the same doctrine as chapter 13’s 得神者昌，失神者亡, stated from the physician’s side instead of the patient’s.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| Common English | the spirit does not respond, or fails to respond | Most renderings make 使 intransitive and lose the fact that somebody is trying to employ the spirit. |
| This site | the spirit no longer serves | 使 is to be made to act by someone — the physician with his needle. Keeping it transitive preserves the argument: the method is there, the method is correct, and the patient's spirit will not be employed by it. That is why the chapter can say in the next breath that the illness is the root and the physician the branch. |
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