The chapter opens with a proposition about sovereignty that is easy to read as humility and is something harder. The sage has no fixed mind of his own and takes the mind of the people as his mind.
Read as a constitutional claim it is striking. The ruler is not described as consulting the people, representing them or serving their interests, all of which would leave him with his own view alongside theirs. He is described as not having one. What occupies the position where a ruler's policy would be is whatever the population already is.
The rest of the chapter shows the mechanism at work on two qualities. Those who are good he treats as good, and those who are not good he also treats as good, and so goodness is attained. Those who are trustworthy he trusts, and those who are not he also trusts, and so trust is attained.
That is not tolerance and it is not naivety. It is a claim that these two qualities are produced by being extended rather than earned, so a policy of extending them only to the deserving cannot increase the stock of either. Chapter twenty-seven made the same argument about people who are not good, calling them the material the good works with.
The chapter ends with an image that has been read warmly and coldly. The sage draws himself in, merges his mind with the world, and the people all fix their eyes and ears on him, and he treats them all as his children. Paternal care and total attention are the same picture, and the book leaves both in it.