The chapter ends by describing a person in terms of what cannot be done to him, and it does so in three pairs. He cannot be made close and cannot be made distant. Cannot be benefited and cannot be harmed. Cannot be raised and cannot be brought low.
The six terms are the ordinary instruments of a court. Access, favour, reward, punishment, promotion and disgrace are the levers by which any government moves the people it employs, and the chapter states that all six find no purchase. The figure being described is not defiant and is not in opposition; he is simply outside the range of the mechanism.
That is why the last clause follows as it does: for that reason he is honoured by the world. Honour arrives precisely because it cannot be conferred, which is the same structure as chapter thirty-four, where greatness follows from never claiming it, and chapter two, where merit stays because it is not held.
The condition is given a name in the middle of the chapter, rendered as the dark identity or profound sameness, using the same word for dark that closes chapter one and that chapter fifty-one attaches to power. It names a state of being merged with things rather than positioned among them, and the six impossibilities are consequences of it: all six require a person to occupy a place relative to others, and someone who has settled with the dust does not.
Read politically, the chapter describes the one kind of official a ruler cannot manage. Read privately, it describes a freedom purchased by giving up every form of standing, which is a considerable price and one the chapter does not pretend is small.