I Ching (Book of Changes)

Credits and Licensing: Original author: Unknown

Translator: James Legge

Year of original or translation: 1000 BCE

Any source archive/website: https://sacred-texts.com/ich/index.htm

This edition was prepared and modified by Spark Visions, Inc. (dba Alexandria), https://seekalexandria.com, in 2025. An AI Summary has been added to the title page by Spark Visions, Inc. Original text from the public domain.

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Introduction

Chapter I: The Yî King from The Twelfth Century B.C. to the Commencement of the Christian Era

Chapter II: The Subject-Matter of the Text. The Lineal Figures and the Explanation of Them

Chapter III: The Appendixes

Plates

Plate I Plate II, Figure 1

Plate II, Figure 2

Plate III, Figure 1

Plate III, Figure 2

The Yî King Text: Section I I. The Khien Hexagram

II. The Khwăn Hexagram

III. The Kun Hexagram

IV. The Măng Hexagram

V. The Hsü Hexagram

VI. The Sung Hexagram

VII. The Sze Hexagram

VIII. The Pî Hexagram

IX. The Hsiâo Khû Hexagram

X. The Lî Hexagram

XI. The Thâi Hexagram

XII. The Phî Hexagram

XIII. The Thung Zăn

XIV. The Tâ Yû Hexagram

XV. The Khien Hexagram

XVI. The Yü Hexagram

XVII. The Sui Hexagram

XVIII. The Kû Hexagram

XIX. The Lin Hexagram

XX. The Kwân Hexagram

XXI. The Shih Ho Hexagram

XXII. The Pî Hexagram

XXIII. The Po Hexagram

XXIV. The Fû Hexagram

XXV: The Wû Wang Hexagram

XXVI. The Tâ Khû Hexagram

XXVII. The Î Hexagram

XXVIII. The Tâ Kwo Hexagram

XXIX. The Khan Hexagram

XXX. The Lî Hexagram

Text Section II XXXI. The Hsien Hexagram

XXXII. The Hăng Hexagram

XXXIII. The Thun Hexagram

XXXIV. The Tâ Kwang Hexagram

XXXV. The Žin Hexagram

XXXVI. The Ming Î Hexagram

XXXVII. The Kiâ Zăn Hexagram

XXXVIII. The Khwei Hexagram

XXXIX. The Kien Hexagram

XL. The Kieh Hexagram

XLI. The Sun Hexagram

XLII. The Yî Hexagram

XLIII. The Kwâi Hexagram

XLIV. The Kâu Hexagram

XLV. The Žhui Hexagram

XLVI. The Shăng Hexagram

XLVII. The Khwăn Hexagram

XLVIII. The Žing Hexagram

XLIX. The Ko Hexagram

L. The Ting Hexagram

LI. The Kăn Hexagram

LII. The Kăn Hexagram

LIII. The Kien Hexagram

LIV. The Kwei Mei Hexagram

LV. The Făng Hexagram

LVI. The Lü Hexagram

LVII. The Sun Hexagram

LVIII. The Tui Hexagram

LIX. The Hwân Hexagram

LX. The Kieh Hexagram

LXI. The Kung Fû Hexagram

LXII. The Hsiâo Kwo Hexagram

LXIII. The Kî Žî Hexagram

LXIV. The Wei Žî Hexagram

The Appendixes

Appendix I Section I Section II Appendix II Section I Section II Appendix III: The Great Appendix

Section I Section II Appendix IV Section I Section I: Khien

Section II: Khwăn

Appendix V Appendix V: Treatise of Remarks on the Trigrams

Appendix VI Appendix VI: The Orderly Sequence of the Hexagrams

Appendix VII Appendix VII

I wrote out a translation of the Yî King, embracing both the Text and the Appendixes, in 1854 and 1855; and have to acknowledge that when the manuscript was completed, I knew very little about the scope and method of the book. I laid the volumes containing the result of my labour aside, and hoped, believed indeed, that the light would by and by dawn, and that I should one day get hold of a clue that would guide me to a knowledge of the mysterious classic.

Before that day came, the translation was soaked, in 1870, for more than a month in water of the Red Sea. By dint of careful manipulation it was recovered so as to be still legible; but it was not till 1874 that I began to be able to give to the book the prolonged attention necessary to make it reveal its secrets. Then for the first time I got hold, as I believe, of the clue, and found that my toil of twenty years before was of no service at all.

What had tended more than anything else to hide the nature of the book from my earlier studies was the way in which, with the Text, ordinarily and, as I think, correctly ascribed to king Wăn and his son Tan, there are interspersed, under each hexagram, the portions of the Appendixes I, II, and IV relating to it. The student at first thinks this an advantage. He believes that all the Appendixes were written by Confucius, and combine with the text to form one harmonious work; and he is glad to have the sentiments of 'the three sages' brought together. But I now perceived that the composition of the Text and of the Appendixes, allowing the Confucian authorship of the latter, was separated by about 700 years, and that their subject-matter was often incongruous. My first step towards a right understanding of the Yî was to study the Text by itself and as complete in itself. It was easy to

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do this because the imperial edition of 1715, with all its critical apparatus, keeps the Text and the Appendixes separate.

The wisdom of the course thus adopted became more apparent by the formation of eight different concordances, one for the Text, and one for each of the Appendixes. They showed that many characters in the Appendixes, and those especially which most readily occur to sinologists as characteristic of the Yî, are not to be found in the Text at all. A fuller acquaintance, moreover, with the tone and style of the Appendixes satisfied me that while we had sufficient evidence that the greater part of them was not from Confucius, we had no evidence that any part was his, unless it might be the paragraphs introduced by the compiler or compilers as sayings of 'the Master.'

Studying the Text in the manner thus described, I soon arrived at the view of the meaning and object of the Yî, which I have described in the second chapter of the Introduction; and I was delighted to find that there was a substantial agreement between my interpretations of the hexagrams and their several lines and those given by the most noted commentators from the Han dynasty down to the present. They have not formulated the scheme so concisely as I have done, and they were fettered by their belief in the Confucian authorship of the Appendixes; but they held the same general opinion, and were similarly controlled by it in construing the Text. Any sinologist who will examine the Yü Kih Zăh Kiang Yî King Kieh Î, prepared by one of the departments of the Han Lin college, and published in 1682, and which I have called the 'Daily Lessons,' or 'Lectures,' will see the agreement between my views and those underlying its paraphrase.

After the clue to the meaning of the Yî was discovered, there remained the difficulty of translating. The peculiarity of its style makes it the most difficult of all the Confucian classics to present in an intelligible version. I suppose that there are sinologists who will continue, for a time at least, to maintain that it was intended by its

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author or authors, whoever they were, merely as a book of divination; and of course the oracles of divination were designedly wrapped up in mysterious phraseology. But notwithstanding the account of the origin of the book and its composition by king Wăn and his son, which I have seen reason to adopt, they, its authors, had to write after the manner of diviners. There is hardly another work in the ancient literature of China that presents the same difficulties to the translator.

When I made my first translation of it in 1854, I endeavoured to be as concise in my English as the original Chinese was. Much of what I wrote was made up, in consequence, of so many English words, with little or no mark of syntactical connexion. I followed in this the example of P. Regis and his coadjutors (Introduction, page p. 9) in their Latin version. But their version is all but unintelligible, and mine was not less so. How to surmount this difficulty occurred to me after I had found the clue to the interpretation;--in a fact which I had unconsciously acted on in all my translations of other classics) namely, that the written characters of the Chinese are not representations of words, but symbols of ideas, and that the combination of them in composition is not a representation of what the writer would say, but of what he thinks. It is vain therefore for a translator to attempt a literal version. When the symbolic characters have brought his mind en rapport with that of his author, he is free to render the ideas in his own or any other speech in the best manner that he can attain to. This is the rule which Mencius followed in interpreting the old poems of his country:--'We must try with our thoughts to meet the scope of a sentence, and then we shall apprehend it.' In the study of a Chinese classical book there is not so much an interpretation of the characters employed by the writer as a participation of his thoughts;--there is the seeing of mind to mind. The canon hence derived for a translator is not one of license. It will be his object to express the meaning of the original as exactly and concisely as possible. But it will be necessary for him to introduce a word or two

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now and then to indicate what the mind of the writer supplied for itself. What I have done in this way will generally be seen enclosed in parentheses, though I queried whether I might not dispense with them, as there is nothing in the English version which was not, I believe, present in the writer's thought. I hope, however, that I have been able in this way to make the translation intelligible to readers. If, after all, they shall conclude that in what is said on the hexagrams there is often 'much ado about nothing,' it is not the translator who should be deemed accountable for that, but his original.

I had intended to append to the volume translations of certain chapters from Kû Hsî and other writers of the Sung dynasty; but this purpose could not be carried into effect for want of space. It was found necessary to accompany the version with a running commentary, illustrating the way in which the teachings of king Wăn and his son are supposed to be drawn from the figures and their several lines; and my difficulty was to keep the single Yî within the limits of one volume. Those intended translations therefore are reserved for another opportunity; and indeed, the Sung philosophy did not grow out of the Yî proper, but from the Appendixes to it, and especially from the third of them. It is more Tâoistic than Confucian.

When I first took the Yî in hand, there existed no translation of it in any western language but that of P. Regis and his coadjutors, which I have mentioned above and in various places of the Introduction. The authors were all sinologists of great attainments; and their view of the Text as relating to the transactions between the founders of the Kâu dynasty and the last sovereign of the Shang or Yin, and capable of being illustrated historically, though too narrow, was an approximation to the truth. The late M. Mohl, who had edited the work in 1834, said to me once, 'I like it; for I come to it out of a sea of mist, and find solid ground.' No sufficient distinction was made in it, however, between the Text and the Appendixes; and in discussing the third and following Appendixes the translators

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were haunted by the name and shade of Confucius. To the excessive literalness of the version I have referred above.

In 1876 the Rev. Canon McClatchie, M.A., published a version at Shanghai with the title, 'A Translation of the Confucian Yî King, or the "Classic of Changes," with Notes and Appendix.' This embraces both the Text and the Appendixes, the first, second, and fourth of the latter being interspersed along with the Text, as in the ordinary school editions of the classic. So far as I can judge from his language, he does not appear to be aware that the first and second Appendixes were not the work of king Wăn and the duke of Kâu, but of a subsequent writer--he would say of Confucius--explaining their explanations of the entire hexagrams and their several lines. His own special object was 'to open the mysteries of the Yî by applying to it the key of Comparative Mythology.' Such a key was not necessary; and the author, by the application of it, has found sundry things to which I have occasionally referred in my notes. They are not pleasant to look at or dwell upon; and happily it has never entered into the minds of Chinese scholars to conceive of them. I have followed Canon McClatchie's translation from paragraph to paragraph and from sentence to sentence, but found nothing which I could employ with advantage in my own.

Long after my translation had been completed, and that of the Text indeed was printed, I received from Shanghai the third volume of P. Angelo Zottoli's 'Cursus Litteraturae Sinicae,' which had appeared in 1880. About 100 pages of it are occupied with the Yî. The Latin version is a great improvement on that in the work of Regis; but P. Zottoli translates only the Text of the first two hexagrams, with the portions of the first, second, and fourth Appendixes relating to them; and other six hexagrams with the explanations of king Wăn's Thwan and of the Great Symbolism. of the remaining fifty-six hexagrams only the briefest summary is given; and then follow the Appendixes III, V, VI, and VII at length. The author has done his work well.

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[paragraph continues] His general view of the Yî is stated in the following sentences:--'Ex Fû-hsî figuris, Wăn regis definitionibus, Kâu ducis symbolis, et Confucii commentariis, Liber conficitur, qui a mutationibus, quas duo elementa in hexagrammatum compositione inducunt, Yî (Mutator) vel Yî King (Mutationum Liber) appellatur. Quid igitur tandem famosus iste Yî King? Paucis accipe: ex linearum qualitate continua vel intercisa; earumque situ, imo, medio, vel supremo; mutuaque ipsarum relatione, occursu, dissidio, convenientia; ex ipso scilicet trigrammatum corpore seu forma, tum ex trigrammatum symbolo seu imagine, tum ex trigrammatum proprietate seu virtute, tum etiam aliquando ex unius ad alterum hexagramma varietate, eruitur aliqua imago, deducitur aliqua sententia, quoddam veluti oraculum continens, quod sorte etiam consulere possis ad documentum obtinendum, moderandae vitae solvendove dubio consentaneum. Ita liber juxta Confucii explicationem in scholis tradi solitam. Nil igitur sublime aut mysteriosum, nil foedum aut vile hic quaeras; argutulum potius lusum ibi video ad instructiones morales politicasque eliciendas, ut ad satietatem usque in Sinicis passim classicis, obvias, planas, naturales; tantum, cum liber iste, ut integrum legenti textum facile patebit, ad sortilegii usum deductus fuerit, per ipsum jam summum homo obtinebit vitae beneficium, arcanam cum spiritibus communicationem secretamque futurorum eventuum cognitionem; theurgus igitur visus est iste liber, totus lux, totus spiritus, hominisque vitae accommodatissimus; indeque laudes a Confucio ei tributas, prorsus exaggeratas, in hujus libri praesertim appendice videre erit, si vere tamen, ut communis fert opinio, ipse sit hujus appendicis auctor.'

There has been a report for two or three years of a new translation of the Yî, or at least of a part of it, as being in preparation by M. Terrien de Lacouperie, and Professor R. K. Douglas of the British Museum and King's College, London. I have alluded on pages 8, 9 of the Introduction to some inaccurate statements about native commentaries on the Yî and translations of it by foreigners, made in connexion with this contemplated version. But I did not know

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what the projected undertaking really was, till I read a letter from M. Terrien in the 'Athenæum' of the 21st January of this year. He there says that the joint translation 'deals only with the oldest part of the book, the short lists of characters which follow each of the sixty-four headings, and leaves entirely aside the explanations and commentaries attributed to Wen Wang, Kâu Kung, Confucius, and others, from 1200 B. C. downwards, which are commonly embodied as an integral part of the classic;' adding, 'The proportion of the primitive text to these additions is about one-sixth of the whole.' But if we take away these explanations and commentaries attributed to king Wăn, the duke of Kâu, and Confucius, we take away the whole Yî. There remain only the linear figures attributed to Fû-hsî, without any lists of characters, long or short, without a single written character of any kind whatever. The projectors have been misled somehow about the contents of the Yî; and unless they can overthrow all the traditions and beliefs about them, whether Chinese or foreign, their undertaking is more hopeless than the task laid on the children of Israel by Pharaoh, that they should make bricks without straw.

I do not express myself thus in any spirit of hostility. If, by discoveries in Accadian or any other long-buried and forgotten language, M. Terrien de Lacouperie can throw new light on the written characters of China or on its speech, no one will rejoice more than myself; but his ignorance of how the contents of the classic are made up does not give much prospect of success in his promised translation.

In the preface to the third volume of these 'Sacred Books of the East,' containing the Shû King, Shih King, and Hsiâo King, I have spoken of the Chinese terms Tî and Shang Tî, and shown how I felt it necessary to continue to render them by our word God, as I had done in all my translations of the Chinese classics since 1861. My doing so gave offence to some of the missionaries in China and others; and in June, 1880, twenty-three gentlemen addressed a letter to Professor F. Max Müller, complaining

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that, in such a work edited by him, he should allow me to give my own private interpretation of the name or names in question instead of translating them or transferring them. Professor Müller published the letter which he had received, with his reply to it, in the 'Times' newspaper of Dec. 30, 1880. Since then the matter has rested, and I introduce it again here in this preface, because, though we do not meet with the name in the Yî so frequently as in the Shû and Shih, I have, as before, wherever it does occur, translated it by God. Those who object to that term say that Shang Tî might be rendered by 'Supreme Ruler' or 'Supreme Emperor,' or by 'Ruler (or Emperor) on high;' but when I examined the question, more than thirty years ago, with all possible interest and all the resources at my command, I came to the conclusions that Tî, on its first employment by the Chinese fathers, was intended to express the same concept which our fathers expressed by God, and that such has been its highest and proper application ever since. There would be little if any difference in the meaning conveyed to readers by 'Supreme Ruler' and 'God;' but when I render Tî by God and Shang Tî by the Supreme God, or, for the sake of brevity, simply by God, I am translating, and not giving a private interpretation of my own. I do it not in the interests of controversy, but as the simple expression of what to me is truth; and I am glad to know that a great majority of the Protestant missionaries in China use Tî and Shang Tî as the nearest analogue for God.

It would be tedious to mention the many critical editions and commentaries that I have used in preparing the translation. I have not had the help of able native scholars, which saved time and was otherwise valuable when I was working in the East on other classics. The want of this, however, has been more than compensated in some respects by my copy of the 'Daily Lectures on the Yî,' the full title of which is given on page xiv. The friend who purchased it for me five years ago in Canton was obliged to content himself with a second-hand copy; but I found that the

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previous owner had been a ripe scholar who freely used his pencil in pursuing his studies. It was possible, from his punctuation, interlineations, and many marginal notes, to follow the exercises of his mind, patiently pursuing his search for the meaning of the most difficult passages. I am under great obligations to him; and also to the Kâu Yî Keh Kung, the great imperial edition of the present dynasty, first published in 1715. I have generally spoken of its authors as the Khang-hsî editors. Their numerous discussions of the meaning, and ingenious decisions, go far to raise the interpretation of the Yî to a science.

J. L.

OXFORD

16th March, 1882

THE YÎ KING FROM THE TWELFTH CENTURY B.C. TO THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE CHRISTIAN ERA There was a Yî in the time of Confucius

The utterance is referred by the best critics to the closing period of Confucius' life, when he had returned from his long and painful wanderings among the States, and was settled again. in his native Lû. By this time he was nearly seventy, and it seems strange, if he spoke seriously, that he should have thought it possible for his life to be prolonged other fifty years. So far as that specification is concerned, a corruption of the text is generally admitted. My reason for adducing the passage has simply been to prove from it the existence of a Yî King in the time of Confucius. In the history of him by Sze-mâ Khien it is stated that, in the closing years of his life, he became fond of the Yî, and wrote various appendixes to it, that he read his copy of it so much that the leathern thongs (by which the tablets containing it were bound together) were thrice worn out, and that he said, 'Give me several years (more), and I should be master of the Yî 1:2.' The ancient books on which Confucius had delighted

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to discourse with his disciples were those of History, Poetry, and Rites and Ceremonies 2:1; but ere he passed away from among them, his attention was much occupied also by the Yî as a monument of antiquity, which in the prime of his days he had too much neglected.

The Yî is now made up of the Text which Confucius saw and the Appendixes ascribed to him by the name of the 'Ten Appendixes,' and are, with hardly a dissentient voice, attributed to the sage. They are published along with the older Text, which is based on still older lineal figures, and are received by most Chinese readers, as well as by foreign Chinese scholars, as an integral portion of the Yî King. The two portions should, however, be carefully distinguished. I will speak of them as the Text and the Appendixes.

The Yî escaped the fires of Žhin

B. C. 213. In the memorial which the premier Lî Sze addressed to his sovereign, advising that the old books should be consigned to the flames, an exception was made of those which treated of 'medicine, divination, and husbandry 2:2.' The Yî was held to be a book of divination, and so was preserved.

In the catalogue of works in the imperial library, prepared by Liû Hin about the beginning of our era, there is an enumeration of those on the Yî and its Appendixes,--the books of thirteen different authors or schools, comprehended in 294 portions of larger or smaller dimensions 2:3. I need not follow the history and study of the Yî into the line of the centuries since the time of Liû Hin. The imperial Khang-hsî edition of it, which appeared in 1715, contains quotations from the commentaries of 218 scholars, covering, more or less closely, the time from the second century B. C. to our seventeenth century. I may venture to say that p. 3

those 218 are hardly a tenth of the men who have tried to interpret the remarkable book, and solve the many problems to which it gives rise.

The Yî before Confucius, and when it was made so called, existed before Confucius, and has come down to us as correctly as any other of the. ancient books of China; and it might also be said, as correctly as any of the old monuments of Hebrew, Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin literature. The question arises of how far before Confucius we can trace its existence. of course an inquiry into this point will not include the portions or appendixes attributed to the sage himself. Attention will be called to them by and by, when I shall consider how far we are entitled, or whether we are at all entitled, to ascribe them to him. I do not doubt, however, that they belong to what may be called the Confucian period, and were produced some time after his death, probably between B.C. 450 and 350. By whomsoever they were written, they may be legitimately employed in illustration of what were the prevailing views in that age on various points connected with the Yî. Indeed, but for the guidance and hints derived from them as to the meaning of the text, and the relation between its statements and the linear figures, there would be great difficulty in making out any consistent interpretation of it.

(i) The earliest mention of the classic is found in the

The Yî mentioned in the Official Book of Kâu

Official Book of the Kâu dynasty, where it is said that, among the duties of 'the Grand Diviner,' 'he had charge of the rules for the three Yî (systems of Changes), called the Lien-shan, the Kweî-žhang, and the Yî of Kâu; that in each of them the regular (or primary) lineal figures were 8, which were multiplied, in each, till the), amounted to 64.' The date of the Official Book has not been exactly ascertained. The above passage can hardly be reconciled with the opinion of the majority of Chinese critics that it was the work of the duke of Kâu, the consolidator and legislator of the dynasty so called; but I think there must have been the groundwork of it at a very early date. When that was composed or compiled, there

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was existing, among the archives of the kingdom, under the charge of a high officer, 'the Yî of Kâu,'--what constitutes the Text of the present Yî; the Text, that is, as distinguished from the Appendixes. There were two other Yî, known as the Lien-shan and the Kwei-žhang. It would be a waste of time to try to discover the meaning of these designations. They are found in this and another passage of the Official Book; and nowhere else. Not a single trace of what they denoted remains, while we possess 'the Yî of Kâu' complete 4:1.

(ii) In the Supplement of Žo Khiû-ming to 'the Spring and Autumn,' The Yî mentioned in the Žo Khwan there is abundant evidence that divination by the Yî was frequent, throughout the states of China, before the time of Confucius. There are at least eight narratives of such a practice, between the years B.C. 672 and 564, before he was born; and five times during his life-time the divining stalks and the book were had recourse to on occasions with which he had nothing to do. In all these cases the text of the Yî, as we have it now, is freely quoted. The 'Spring and Autumn' commences in B.C. 722. If it extended back to the rise of the Kâu dynasty, we should, no doubt, find

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accounts of divination by the Yî interspersed over the long intervening period. For centuries before Confucius appeared on the stage of his country, the Yî was well known among the various feudal states, which then constituted the Middle Kingdom 5:1.

(iii) We may now look into one of the Appendixes for its testimony to the age and authorship of the Text. The third Appendix is the longest, and the most important 5:2. In the 49th paragraph of the second Section of it it is said:--

'Was it not in the middle period of antiquity that the Yî began to flourish? Was not he who made it (or were not they who made it) familiar with anxiety and calamity?'

The highest antiquity commences, according to Chinese writers, with Fû-hsî, B.C. 3322; and the lowest with Confucius in the middle of the sixth century B.C. Between these is the period of middle antiquity, extending a comparatively short time, from the rise of the Kâu dynasty, towards the close of the twelfth century B.C., to the Confucian era. According to this paragraph it was in this period that our Yî was made.

The 69th paragraph is still more definite in its testimony:--

'Was it not in the last age of the Yin (dynasty), when the virtue of Kâu had reached its highest point, and during the troubles between king Wăn and (the tyrant) Kâu, that (the study of) the Yî began to flourish? On this account the explanations (in the book) express (a feeling of) anxious apprehension, (and teach) how peril may be turned into security, and easy carelessness is sure to meet with overthrow.'

The dynasty of Yin was superseded by that of Kâu in B. C. 1122. The founder of Kâu was he whom we call king Wăn, though he himself never occupied the throne. The

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troubles between him and the last sovereign of Yin reached their height in B. C. 1143, when the tyrant threw him into prison in a place called Yû-lî, identified as having been in the present district of Thang-yin, department of Kang-teh, province of Ho-nan. Wăn was not kept long in confinement. His friends succeeded in appeasing the jealousy of his enemy, and securing his liberation in the following year. It follows that the Yî, so far as we owe it to king Wăn, was made in the year B.C. 1143 or 1142, or perhaps that it was begun in the former year and finished in the latter 6:1.

But the part which is thus ascribed to king Wăn is only a small portion of the Yî. A larger share is attributed to his son Tan, known as the duke of Kâu, and in it we have allusions to king Wû, who succeeded his father Wăn, and was really the first sovereign of the dynasty of Kâu 6:2. There are passages, moreover, which must be understood of events in the early years of the next reign. But the duke of Kâu died in the year B. C. 1105, the 11th of king Khăng. A few years then before that time, in the last decade of the twelfth century B. C., the Yî King, as it has come down to us, was complete 6:3.

The Yî is not the most ancient of the Chinese books equally famous son, the duke of Kâu, in between thirty and forty years later. It can thus boast of a great antiquity; but a general opinion has prevailed that it belonged to a period still more distant. Only two translations of it have been made by European scholars. The first was executed by Regis and other Roman Catholic missionaries in the beginning of last century, though it was given to the public only p. 7

in 1834 by the late Jules Mohl, with a title commencing 'Y-King, antiquissimus Sinarum liber 7:1.' The language of the other European translator of it, the Rev. Canon McClatchie of Shanghâi, whose work appeared in 1876, is still more decided. The first sentence of his Introduction contains two very serious misstatements, but I have at present to do only with the former of them;--that 'the Yî King is regarded by the Chinese with peculiar veneration, . . . . as being the most ancient of their classical writings.' The Shû is the oldest of the Chinese classics, and contains documents more, than a thousand years earlier than king Wăn. Several pieces of the Shih King are also older than anything in the Yî; to which there can thus he assigned only the third place in point of age among the monuments of Chinese literature. Existing, however, about 3000 years ago, it cannot be called modern. Unless it be the books of the Pentateuch, Joshua, and judges, an equal antiquity cannot be claimed for any portion of our Sacred Scriptures.

It will be well to observe here also how much older the

The Text much older than the Appendixes

Text is than the Appendixes. Supposing them to be the work of Confucius, though it will appear by and by that this assumption

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can be received as only partially correct, if indeed it be received at all, the sage could not have entered on their composition earlier than B.C. 483, 660 years later than the portion of the text that came from king Wăn, and nearly 630 later than what we owe to the duke of Kâu. But during that long period of between six and seven centuries changes may have arisen in the views taken by thinking men of the method and manner of the Yî; and I cannot accept the Text and the Appendixes as forming one work in any proper sense of the term. Nothing has prevented the full understanding of both, so far as parts of the latter can be understood, so much as the blending of them together, which originated with Pî Kih of the first Han dynasty. The common editions of the book have five of the Appendixes (as they are ordinarily reckoned) broken up and printed side by side with the Text; and the confusion thence arising has made it difficult, through the intermixture of incongruous ideas, for foreign students to lay hold of the meaning.

Labours of native scholars on the Yî the Appendixes; and in the Khang-hsî edition of them the two are printed separately. Only now and then, however, has any critic ventured to doubt that the two parts formed one homogeneous whole, or that all the appendixes were from the style or pencil of Confucius. Hundreds of them have brought a wonderful and consistent meaning out of the Text; but to find in it or in the Appendixes what is unreasonable, or any inconsistency between them, would be to impeach the infallibility of Confucius, and stamp on themselves the brand of heterodoxy.

At the same time it is an unfair description of what they

An imperfect description of their labours have accomplished to say, as has been done lately, that since the fires of Žhin, 'the foremost scholars of each generation have edited the Text (meaning both the Text and the Appendixes), and heaped commentary after commentary upon it; and one and all have arrived at the somewhat

p. 9

lame conclusion that its full significance is past finding out 9:1.' A multitude of the native commentaries are of the highest value, and have left little to be done for the elucidation of the Text; and if they say that a passage in an Appendix is 'unfathomable' or 'incalculable,' it is because their authors shrink from allowing, even to themselves, that the ancient sages intermeddled, and intermeddled unwisely, with things too high for them.

When the same writer who thus speaks of native scholars goes on to say that 'in the same way a host

Erroneous account of the labours of European Chinese scholars of European Chinese scholars have made translations of the Yî, and have, if possible, made confusion worse confounded,' he only shows how imperfectly he had made himself acquainted with the subject. 'The host of European Chinese scholars who have made translations of the Yî' amount to two,--the same two mentioned by me above on pp. 6, 7. The translation of Regis and his coadjutors 9:2 is indeed capable of improvement; but their work as a whole, and especially the prolegomena, dissertations, and notes, supply a mass of correct and valuable information. They had nearly succeeded in unravelling the confusion, and solving the enigma of the Yî.

Footnotes

1:1:1 Confucian Analects, VII, xvi.

1:1:2 The Historical Records; Life of Confucius, p. 12.

2:2:1 Analects, VII, xvii.

2:2:2 Legge's Chinese Classics, I, prolegomena, pp. 6-9.

2:2:3 Books of the Earlier Han; History of Literature, pp. 1, 2.

4:4:1 See the Kâu Kwan (or Lî), Book XXIV, parr. 3, 4, and 27. Biot (Le Tcheou Lî, vol. ii, pp. 70, 71) translates the former two paragraphs thus: 'Il (Le Grand Augure) est préposé aux trois methodes pour les changements (des lignes divinatoires). La première est appelée Liaison des montagnes (Lien-shan); la seconde, Retour et Conservation (Kwei-žhang); la troisième, Changements des Kâu. Pour toutes il y a huit lignes symboliques sacrées, et soixante-quatre combinaisons de ces lignes.'

Some tell us that by Lien-shan was intended Fû-hsî, and by Kwei-žhang Hwang Tî; others, that the former was the Yî of the Hsiâ dynasty, and the latter that of Shang or Yin. A third set will have it that Lien-shan was a designation of Shăn Năng, between Fû-hsî and Hwang Tî. I should say myself, as many Chinese critics do say, that Lien-shan was an arrangement of the lineal symbols in which the first figure was the present 52nd hexagram, Kăn consisting of the trigram representing mountains doubled; and that Kwei-žhang was an arrangement where the first figure was the present 2nd hexagram, Khwăn consisting of the trigram representing the earth doubled,--with reference to the disappearance and safe keeping of plants in the bosom of the earth in winter. All this, however, is only conjecture.

5:5:1 See in the Žo Khwan, under the 22nd year of duke Kwang (B.C. 672); the 1st year of Min (1661); and in his 2nd year (660); twice in the 15th year of Hsî (645); his 25th year (635); the 12th year of Hsüan, (597); the 16th year of Khăng (575); the 9th year of Hsiang (564); his 25th year (548); the 5th year of Khâo (537); his 7th year (535); his 12th year (530); and the 9th year of Âi (486).

5:5:2 That is, the third as it appears farther on in this volume in two Sections. With the Chinese critics it forms the fifth and sixth Appendixes, or, 'Wings,' as they are termed.

6:6:1 Sze-mâ Khien (History of the Kâu Dynasty, p. 3) relates that, 'when he was confined in Yû-lî, Wăn increased the 8 trigrams to 64 hexagrams.'

6:6:2 E.g., hexagrams XVII, 1. 6; XLVI, 1. 4. Tan's authorship of the symbolism is recognised in the Žo Khwan, B. C. 540.

6:6:3 P. Regis (vol. ii, P. 379) says: 'Vel nihil vel parum errabit qui dicet opus Yî King fuisse perfectum anno quinto Khăng Wang, seu anno 1109 aut non ultra annum 1108, ante aerae Christianae initium; quod satis in rebus non omnino certis.' But the fifth year of king Khăng was B. C. 1111.

7:7:1 It has been suggested that 'Antiquissimus Sinarum liber' may mean only 'A very ancient book of the Chinese,' but the first sentence of the Preface to the work commences:--'Inter onmes constat librorum Sinicorum, quos classicos vocant, primum et antiquissimum esse Y-King.'

At the end of M. De Guignes' edition of P. Gaubil's translation of the Shû, there is a notice of the Yî King sent in 1738 to the Cardinals of the Congregation de Propaganda Fide by M. Claude Visdelou, Bishop of Claudiopolis. M. De Guignes says himself, 'L' Y-King est le premier des Livres Canoniques des Chinois.' But P. Visdelou writes more guardedly and correctly:--'Pour son ancienneté, s'il en faut croire les Annales des Chinois, il a été commencé quarante-six siècles avant celui-ci. Si cela est vrai, comme toute la nation l'avoue unanimement, ou peut à juste titre l'appeler le plus ancien des livres.' But he adds, 'Ce n'étoit pas proprement un livre, ni quelque chose d'approchant; c'étoit une énigme très obscure, et plus difficile cent fois à expliquer que celle du sphinx.'

P. Couplet expresses himself much to the same effect in the prolegomena (p. xviii) to the work called 'Confucius Sinarum Philosophus,' published at Paris in 1687 by himself and three other fathers of the Society of Jesus (Intorcetta, Herdritch, and Rougemont). Both they and P. Visdelou give an example of a portion of the text and its interpretation, having singularly selected the same hexagram,--the 15th, on Humility.

9:9:1 See a communication on certain new views about the Yî in the 'Times' of April 20, 1880; reprinted in Trübner's American, European, and Oriental Literary Record, New Series, vol. i, pp. 125-127.

9:9:2 Regis' coadjutors in the work were the Fathers Joseph de Mailla, who turned the Chinese into Latin word for word, and compared the result with the Mankâu version of the Yî; and Peter du Tartre, whose principal business was to supply the historical illustrations. Regis himself revised all their work and enlarged it, adding his own dissertations and notes. See Prospectus Operis, immediately after M. Mohl's Preface.

THE SUBJECT-MATTER OF THE TEXT. THE LINEAL FIGURES AND THE EXPLANATION OF THEM

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its authors in the twelfth century B. C., and that of the latter to between six and seven centuries later at least, I proceed to give an account of what we find in the Text, and how it is deduced from the figures.

The subject-matter of the Text may be briefly represented

The Yî consists of essays based on lineal figures as consisting of sixty-four short essays, enigmatically and symbolically expressed, on important themes, mostly of a moral, social, and political character, and based on the same number of lineal figures, each made up of six lines, some of which are whole and the others divided.

The first two and the last two may serve for the present as a specimen of those figures: , , and 10:1. The Text says nothing about their origin and formation. There they are. King Wăn takes them up, one after another, in the order that suits himself, determined, evidently, by the contrast in the lines of each successive pair of hexagrams, and gives their significance, as a whole, with some indication, perhaps, of the action to be taken in the circumstances which he supposes them to symbolise, and whether that action will be lucky or unlucky. Then the duke of Kâu, beginning with the first or bottom line, expresses, by means of a symbolical or emblematical illustration, the significance of each line, with a similar indication of the good or bad fortune of action taken in connexion with it. The king's interpretation of the whole hexagram will be found to be in harmony with the combined significance of the six lines as interpreted by his son.

Both of them, no doubt, were familiar with the practice of divination which had prevailed in China for more than a thousand years, and would copy closely its methods and style. They were not divining themselves, but their words became oracles to subsequent ages, when men divined by the hexagrams, and sought by means of what was said under them to ascertain how it would be with them in the

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future, and learn whether they should persevere in or withdraw from the courses they were intending to pursue.

The origin of the lineal figures necessary to relate what is said of their origin, and of the rules observed in studying and interpreting them. For information on these points we must have recourse to the Appendixes; and in reply to the question by whom and in what way the figures were formed, the third, of which we made use in the last chapter, supplies us with three different answers.

(i) The 11th paragraph of Section ii says:--

'Anciently, when the rule of all under heaven was in the hands of Pâo-hsî, looking up, he contemplated the brilliant forms exhibited in the sky; and looking down, he surveyed the patterns shown on the earth. He marked the ornamental appearances on birds and beasts, and the (different) suitabilities of the soil. Near at hand, in his own person, he found things for consideration, and the same at a distance, in things in general. On this he devised the eight lineal figures of three lines each, to exhibit fully the spirit-like and intelligent operations (in nature), and to classify the qualities of the myriads of things.'

Pâo-hsî is another name for Fû-hsî, the most ancient personage who is mentioned with any definiteness in Chinese history, while much that is fabulous is current about him. His place in chronology begins in B.C. 3322, 5203 years ago. He appears in this paragraph as the deviser of the eight kwâ or trigrams. The processes by which he was led to form them, and the purposes which he intended them to serve, are described, but in vague and general terms that do not satisfy our curiosity. The eight figures, however, were , , , , , , , and ; called khien, tui, lî, kăn, sun, khân, kăn, and khwăn; and representing heaven or the sky; water, especially a collection of water as in a marsh or lake; fire, the sun, lightning; thunder; wind and wood; water, especially as in rain, the clouds, springs, streams in defiles, and the moon; a hill or mountain; and the earth. To each of these figures is assigned a certain attribute or quality which should be suggested by the

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natural object it symbolises; but on those attributes we need not enter at present.

(ii) The 70th and 71st paragraphs of Section i give another account of the origin of the trigrams:--

'In (the system of) the Yî there is the Great Extreme, which produced the two Î (Elementary Forms). These two Forms produced the four Hsiang (Emblematic Symbols); which again produced the eight Kwâ (or Trigrams). The eight Kwâ served to determine the good and evil (issues of events), and from this determination there ensued the (prosecution of the) great business of life.'

The two elementary Forms, the four emblematic Symbols, and the eight Trigrams can all be exhibited with what may be deemed certainty. A whole line ( ) and a divided ( ) were the two Î. These two lines placed over themselves, and each of them over the other, formed the four Hsiang: ; ; ; . The same two lines placed successively over these Hsiang, formed the eight Kwâ, exhibited above.

Who will undertake to say what is meant by 'the Great Extreme' which produced the two elementary Forms? Nowhere else does the name occur in the old Confucian literature. I have no doubt myself that it found its way into this Appendix in the fifth (?or fourth) century B.C. from a Tâoist source. Kû Hsî, in his 'Lessons on the Yî for the Young,' gives for it the figure of a circle,--thus, ; observing that he does so from the philosopher Kâu (A.D. 1017-1073) 12:1, and cautioning his readers against thinking that such a representation came from Fû-hsî himself. To me the circular symbol appears very unsuccessful. 'The Great Extreme,' it is said, 'divided and produced two lines,--a whole line and a divided line.' But I do not understand how this could be. Suppose it possible for the circle to unroll itself;--

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we shall have one long line, . If this divide itself, we have two whole lines; and another division of one of them is necessary to give us the whole and the divided lines of the lineal figures. The attempt to fashion the Great Extreme as a circle must be pronounced a failure.

But when we start from the two lines as bases, the formation of all the diagrams by a repetition of the process indicated above is easy. The addition to each of the trigrams of each of the two fundamental lines produces 16 figures of four lines; dealt with in the same way, these produce 32 figures of five lines; and a similar operation with these produces the 64 hexagrams, each of which forms the subject of an essay in the text of the Yî. The lines increase in an arithmetical progression whose common difference is 1, and the figures in a geometrical progression whose common ratio is 2. This is all the mystery in the formation of the lineal figures; this, I believe, was the process by which they were first formed; and it is hardly necessary to imagine them to have come from a sage like Fû-hsî. The endowments of an ordinary man were sufficient for such a work. It was possible even to shorten the operation by proceeding at once from the trigrams to the hexagrams, according to what we find in Section i, paragraph 2:--

'A strong and a weak line were manipulated together (till there were the 8 trigrams), and those 8 trigrams were added each to itself and to all the others (till the 64 hexagrams were formed).'

It is a moot question who first multiplied the figures

Who first multiplied the figures to 64? from the trigrams universally ascribed to Fû-hsî to the 64 hexagrams of the Yî The more common view is that it was king Wăn; but Kû Hsî, when he was questioned on the subject, rather inclined to hold that Fû-hsî had multiplied them himself, but declined to say whether he thought that their names were as old as the figures themselves, or only dated from the twelfth century B.C. 13:1 I will not venture to controvert

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his opinion about the multiplication of the figures, but I must think that the names, as we have them now, were from king Wăn.

No Chinese writer has tried to explain why the framers stopped with the 64 hexagrams, instead of going on to

Why the figures were not continued after 64 128 figures of 7 lines, 256 of 8, 512 of 9, and so on indefinitely. No reason can be given for it, but the cumbrousness of the result, and the impossibility of dealing, after the manner of king Wăn, with such a mass of figures.

(iii) The 73rd paragraph of Section i, with but one paragraph between it and the two others which we have been considering, gives what may be considered a third account of the origin of the lineal figures:--

'Heaven produced the spirit-like things (the tortoise and the divining plant), and the sages took advantage of them. (The operations of) heaven and earth are marked by so many changes and transformations, and the sages imitated them (by means of the Yî). Heaven hangs out its (brilliant) figures, from which are seen good fortune and bad, and the sages made their emblematic interpretations accordingly. The Ho gave forth the scheme or map, and the Lo gave forth the writing, of (both of) which the sages took advantage.'

The words with which we have at present to do are 'The Ho (that is, the Yellow River) gave forth the Map.' This map, according to tradition and popular belief, contained a scheme which served as a model to Fû-hsî in making his 8 trigrams. Apart from this passage in the Yî King, we know that Confucius believed in such a map, or spoke at least as if he did 14:1. In the 'Record of Rites' it is said that 'the map was borne by a horse 14:2;' and the thing, whatever it was, is mentioned in the Shû as still preserved at court, among other curiosities, in B.C. 1079 14:3. The story of it, as now current, is this, that 'a dragon-horse' issued from the Yellow River, bearing on its back an arrangement of marks, from which Fû-hsî got the idea of the trigrams. p. 15

All this is so evidently fabulous that it seems a waste of time to enter into any details about it. My reason for doing so is a wish to take advantage of the map in giving such a statement of the rules observed in interpreting the figures as is necessary in this Introduction.

The map that was preserved, it has been seen, in the eleventh century B.C., afterwards perished, and though

The form of the River Map there was much speculation about its form from the time that the restoration of the ancient classics was undertaken in the Han dynasty, the first delineation of it given to the public was in the reign of Hui Žung of the Sung dynasty (A. D. 1101-1125) 15:1. The most approved scheme of it is the following:--

It will be observed that the markings in this scheme are small circles, pretty nearly equally divided into dark and light. All of them whose numbers are odd are light circles, 1, 3, 5, 7, 9; and all of them whose numbers are even are dark,--2, 4, 6, 8, 10. This is given as the origin of what is said in paragraphs 49 and 50 of Section i about the numbers of heaven and earth. The difference in the colour of the circles occasioned the distinction of them and of what they

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signify into Yin and Yang, the dark and the bright, the moon-like and the sun-like; for the sun is called the Great Brightness (Thâi Yang), and the moon the Great Obscurity (Thâi Yin). I shall have more to say in the next chapter on the application of these names. Fû-hsî in making the trigrams, and king Wăn, if it was he who first multiplied them to the 64 hexagrams, found it convenient to use lines instead of the circles:--the whole line ( ) for the bright circle ( ), and the divided line ( ) for the dark ( ). The first, the third, and the fifth lines in a hexagram, if they are 'correct' as it is called, should all be whole, and the second, fourth, and sixth lines should all be divided. Yang lines are strong (or hard), and Yin lines are weak (or soft). The former indicate vigour and authority; the latter, feebleness and submission. It is the part of the former to command; of the latter to obey.

The lines, moreover, in the two trigrams that make up the hexagrams, and characterise the subjects which they represent, are related to one another by their position, and have their significance modified accordingly. The first line and the fourth, the second and the fifth,. the third and the sixth are all correlates; and to make the correlation perfect the two members of it should be lines of different qualities, one whole and the other divided. And, finally, the middle lines of the trigrams, the second and fifth, that is, of the hexagrams, have a peculiar value and force. If we have a whole line ( ) in the fifth place, and a divided line ( ) in the second, or vice versâ, the correlation is complete. Let the subject of the fifth be the sovereign or a commander-in-chief, according to the name and meaning of the hexagram, then the subject of the second will be an able minister or a skilful officer, and the result of their mutual action will be most beneficial and successful. It is specially important to have a clear idea of the name of the hexagram, and of the subject or state which it is intended to denote. The significance of all the lines comes thus to be of various application, and will differ in different hexagrams.

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I have thus endeavoured to indicate how the lineal figures were formed, and the principal rules laid down for the interpretation of them. The details are wearying, but my position is like that of one who is called on to explain an important monument of architecture, very bizarre in its conception and execution. A plainer, simpler structure might have answered the purpose better, but the architect had his reasons for the plan and style which he adopted. If the result of his labours be worth expounding, we must not grudge the study necessary to detect his processes of thought, nor the effort and time required to bring the minds of others into sympathy with his.

My own opinion, as I have intimated, is, that the second, account of the origin of the trigrams and hexagrams is the true one. However the idea of the whole and divided lines arose in the mind of the first framer, we must start from them; and then, manipulating them in the manner described, we arrive, very easily, at all the lineal figures, and might proceed to multiply them to billions. We cannot tell who devised the third account of their formation from the map or scheme on the dragon-horse of the, Yellow River 17:1. Its object, no doubt, was to impart a supernatural character to the trigrams and produce a religious veneration for them. It may be doubted whether the scheme as it is now fashioned be the correct one,--such as it was in the Kâu dynasty. The paragraph where it is mentioned, goes on to say--'The Lo produced the writing.' This writing was a scheme of the same character as the Ho map, but on the back of a tortoise, which emerged from the river Lo, and showed it to the Great Yü, when he was engaged in his celebrated work of draining off the waters of the flood, as related in the Shû. To the hero sage it suggested 'the Great Plan,' an interesting but mystical document of the same classic, 'a Treatise,' according to Gaubil, 'of Physics, Astrology, Divination, Morals, Politics, and Religion,' the great model for the government of the

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kingdom. The accepted representation of this writing is the following:--

But substituting numbers for the number of marks, we have

This is nothing but the arithmetical puzzle, in which the numbers from 1 to 9 are arranged so as to make 15 in whatever way we add them 18:1. If we had the original form of 'the River Map,' we should probably find it a numerical trifle, not more difficult, not more supernatural, than this magic square.

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To understand it, it will be necessary to keep in mind the circumstances in which king Wăn addressed himself to the study of the lineal figures. The kingdom, under

State of the country in time of king Wăn the sovereigns of the Yin or Shang dynasty, was utterly disorganised and demoralised. A brother of the reigning king thus described its condition:--

'The house of Yin can no longer exercise rule over the land. The great deeds of our founder were displayed in a former age, but through mad addiction to drink we have destroyed the effects of his virtue. The people, small and great, are given to highway robberies, villainies, and treachery. The nobles and officers imitate one another in violating the laws. There is no certainty that criminals will be apprehended. The lesser people rise up and commit violent outrages on one another. The dynasty of Yin is sinking in ruin; its condition is like that of one crossing a large stream, who can find neither ford nor bank 19:1.'

This miserable state of the nation was due very much to

The character of the monarch the character and tyranny of the monarch. When the son of Wăn took the field against him, he thus denounced him in 'a Solemn Declaration' addressed to all the states:--

'Shâu, the king of Shang, treats all virtue with contemptuous slight, and abandons himself to wild idleness and irreverence. He has cut himself off from Heaven, and brought enmity between himself and the people. He cut through the leg-bones of those who were wading in a (winter-)morning he cut out the heart of the good man 19:2. His power has been shown in killing and murdering. His honours and confidence are given to the villainous and bad. He has driven from him his instructors and guardians. He has thrown to the winds the statutes and penal laws. He neglects the sacrifices to Heaven and Earth. He has discontinued the offerings p. 20

in the ancestral temple. He makes (cruel) contrivances of wonderful device and extraordinary ingenuity to please his wife 20:1--.God will no longer bear with him, but with a curse is sending down his ruin 20:2.'

Such was the condition of the nation, such the character of the sovereign. Meanwhile in the west of the kingdom, The lords of Kâu; and especially king Wăn in a part of what is now the province of Shen-hsî, lay the principality of Kâu, the lords of which had long been distinguished for their ability, and virtue. Its present chief, now known to us as king Wăn, was Khang, who had succeeded to his father in B. C. 1185. He was not only lord of Kâu, but had come to be a sort of viceroy over a great part of the kingdom. Equally distinguished in peace and war, a model of all that was good and attractive, he conducted himself with remarkable wisdom and self-restraint. Princes and people would have rejoiced to follow him to attack the tyrant, but he shrank from exposing himself to the charge of being disloyal. At last the jealous suspicion of Shâu was aroused. Wăn, as has been already stated, was thrown into prison in B. C. 1143, and the order for his death might arrive at any moment. Then it was that he occupied himself with the lineal figures.

The use of those figures--of the trigrams at least--had long been practised for the purposes of divination. The employment of the divining stalks is indicated in 'the Counsels of the Great Yü,' one of the earliest Books of the Shû 20:3, and a whole section in 'the Great Plan,' also a Book of the Shû, and referred to the times of the Hsiâ dynasty, describes how 'doubts were to be examined' by means of the tortoise-shell and the stalks 20:4. Wăn could not but be familiar with divination as an institution of his p. 21

country 21:1. Possibly it occurred to him that nothing was

King Wăn in prison, occupied with the lineal figures more likely to lull the suspicions of his dangerous enemy than the study of the figures; and if his keepers took notice of what he was doing, they would smile at his lines, and the sentences which he appended to them.

I like to think of the lord of Kâu, when incarcerated in Yû-lî, with the 64 figures arranged before him. Each hexagram assumed a mystic meaning, and glowed with a deep significance. He made it tell him of the qualities of various objects of nature, or of the principles of human society, or of the condition, actual and possible, of the kingdom. He named the figures, each by a term descriptive of the idea with which he had connected it in his mind, and then he proceeded to set that idea forth, now with a note of exhortation, now with a note of warning. It was an attempt to restrict the follies of divination within the bounds of reason. The last but one of the Appendixes bears the name of 'Sequence of the Diagrams.' I shall have to speak of it more at length in the next chapter. I only remark at present that it deals, feebly indeed, with the names of the hexagrams in harmony with what I have said about them, and tries to account for the order in which they follow one another. It does all this, not critically as if it needed to be established, but in the way of expository statement, relating that about which there was no doubt in the mind of the author.

But all the work of prince Khang or king Wăn in the Yî thus amounts to no more than 64 short paragraphs.

Work of the duke of Kâu on the separate lines

We do not know what led his son Tan to enter into his work and complete it as he did. Tan was a patriot, a hero, a legislator, and a philosopher. Perhaps he took the lineal figures in hand as a tribute of filial duty. What had been done for the whole hexagram he would do for each line, and make it clear that all the six lines 'bent one way their precious influence,' and blended their rays in the globe of light which his father had made each figure give forth.

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[paragraph continues] But his method strikes us as singular. Each line seemed to become living, and suggested some phenomenon in nature or some case of human experience, from which the wisdom or folly, the luckiness or unluckiness, indicated by it could be inferred. It cannot be said that the duke carried out his plan in a way likely to interest any one but a hsien shăng who is a votary of divination, and admires the style of its oracles. According to our notions, a framer of emblems should be a good deal of a poet, but those of the Yî only make us think of a dryasdust. Out of more than 350, the greater number are only grotesque. We do not recover from the feeling of disappointment till we remember that both father and son had to write 'according to the trick,' after the manner of diviners, as if this lineal augury had been their profession.

The seventh hexagram which king Wăn named Sze, meaning Hosts. The character is also explained as meaning 'multitudes;' and in fact, in a feudal kingdom, the multitudes of the people were all liable to become its army, when occasion required, and the 'host' and the 'population' might be interchangeable terms. As Froude expresses it in the introductory chapter to his History of England, 'Every man was regimented somewhere.'

The hexagram Sze is composed of the two trigrams Khan ( ) and Khwăn ( ), exhibiting waters collected on the earth; and in other symbolisms besides that of the Yî, waters indicate assembled multitudes of men. The waters on which the mystical Babylon sits in the Apocalypse are explained as 'peoples and multitudes and nations and tongues.' I do not positively affirm that it was by this interpretation of the trigrams that king Wăn saw in the feudal hosts of his country collected, for neither from him nor his son do we learn, by their direct affirmation, that they had any acquaintance with, the trigrams of Fû-hsî. The name which he gave

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the figure shows, however, that he saw in it the feudal hosts in the field. How shall their expedition be conducted that it may come to a successful issue?

Looking again at the figure, we see that it is made up of five divided lines, and of one undivided. The undivided line occupies the central place in the lower trigram,--the most important place, next to the fifth, in the whole hexagram. It will represent, in the language of the commentators, 'the lord of the whole figure;' and the parties represented by the other lines may be expected to be of one mind with him or obedient to him. He must be the leader of the hosts. If he were on high, in the fifth place, he would be the sovereign of the kingdom. This is what king Wăn says:--

'Sze indicates how (in the case which it supposes), with firmness and correctness, and (a leader of) age and experience, there will be good fortune and no error.'

This is a good auspice. Let us see how the duke of Kâu expands it.

He says:--

'The first line, divided, shows the host going forth according to the rules (for such a movement). If those (rules) be not good, there will be evil.'

We are not told what the rules for a military expedition were. Some commentators understand them of the reasons justifying the movement,--that it should be to repress and punish disorder and rebellion. Others, with more likelihood, take them to be the discipline or rules laid down to be observed by the troops. The line is divided, a weak line in a strong place, 'not correct:' this justifies the caution given in the duke's second sentence.

The Text goes on:--

'The second line, undivided, shows (the leader) in the midst of the hosts. There will be good fortune and no error. The king has thrice conveyed to him his charge.'

This does not need any amplification. The duke saw in the strong line the symbol of the leader, who enjoyed

p. 24

the full confidence of his sovereign, and whose authority admitted of no opposition.

On the third line it is said:--

'The third line, divided, shows how the hosts may possibly have many commanders:--(in such a case) there will be evil.'

The third place is odd, and should be occupied by a strong line, instead of which we have a weak line in it. But it is at the top of the lower trigram, and its subject should be in office or activity. There is suggested the idea that its subject has vaulted over the second line, and wishes to share in the command and honour of him who has been appointed sole commander-in-chief. The lesson in the previous line is made of none effect. We have a divided authority in the expedition. The result can only be evil.

On the fourth line the duke wrote:--

'The fourth line, divided, shows the hosts in retreat: there is no error.'

The line is also weak, and victory cannot be expected but in the fourth place a weak line is in its correct position, and its subject will do what is right in his circumstances. He will retreat, and a retreat is for him the part of wisdom. When safely affected, where advance would be disastrous, a retreat is as glorious as victory.

Under the fifth line we read:--

'The fifth line, divided, shows birds in the fields which it is advantageous to seize (and destroy). There will be no error. If the oldest son lead the host, and younger men be (also) in command, however firm and correct he may be, there will be evil.'

We have an intimation in this passage that only defensive war, or war waged by the rightful authority to put down rebellion and lawlessness, is right. The 'birds in the fields' are emblematic of plunderers and invaders, whom it will be well to destroy. The fifth line symbolises the chief authority, but here he is weak or humble, and has given all power and authority to execute judgment into the hands of the commander-in-chief, who is the oldest son; and in the subject of line 3 we have an example of the younger men who would cause evil if allowed to share his power.

p. 25

Finally, on the sixth line the duke wrote:--

'The topmost line, divided, shows the great ruler delivering his charges (to the men who have distinguished themselves), appointing some to be rulers of states, and others to be chiefs of clans. But small men should not be employed (in such positions).'

The action of the hexagram has been gone through. The expedition has been conducted to a successful end. The enemy has been subdued. His territories are at the disposal of the conqueror. The commander-in-chief has done his part well. His sovereign, 'the great ruler,' comes upon the scene, and rewards the officers who have been conspicuous by their bravery and skill, conferring on them rank and lands. But he is warned to have respect in doing so to their moral character. Small men, of ordinary or less than ordinary character, may be rewarded with riches and certain honours; but land and the welfare of its population should not be given into the hands of any who are not equal to the responsibility of such a trust.

The above is a specimen of what I have called the essays that make up the Yî of Kâu. So would king Wăn and his son have had all military expeditions conducted in their country 3000 years ago. It seems to me that the principles which they lay down might find a suitable application in the modern warfare of our civilised and Christian Europe. The inculcation of such lessons cannot have been without good effect in China during the long course of its history.

Sze is a fair specimen of its class. From the other 63 hexagrams lessons are deduced, for the most part equally good and striking. But why, it may be asked, why should they be conveyed to us by such an array of lineal figures, and in such a farrago of emblematic representations? It is not for the foreigner to insist on such a question. The Chinese have not valued them the less because of the antiquated dress in which their lessons are arrayed. Hundreds of their commentators have evolved and developed their meaning with a minuteness of detail and felicity of illustration that leave nothing to be desired. It is for foreign students of Chinese to gird up their loins for the

p. 26

mastery of the book instead of talking about it as mysterious and all but inexplicable.

Granting, however, that the subject-matter of the Yî is what has been described, very valuable for its practical wisdom, but not drawn up from an abysmal deep of philosophical speculation, it may still be urged, 'But in all this we find nothing to justify the name of the book as Yî King, the "Classic of Changes." Is there not something more, higher or deeper, in the Appendixes that have been ascribed to Confucius, whose authority is certainly not inferior to that of king Wăn, or the duke of Kâu?' To reply fully to this question will require another chapter.

Footnotes

10:10:1 See Plate I at the end of the Introduction.

12:12:1 Kâu-žze, called Kâu Tun-î and Kâu Mâu-shuh, and, still more commonly, from the rivulet near which was his favourite residence, Kâu Lien-khî. Mayers (Chinese Reader's Manual, p. 23) says:--'He held various offices of state, and was for many years at the head of a galaxy of scholars who sought for instruction in matters of philosophy and research:--second only to Kû Hsî in literary repute.'

13:13:1 Kû-žze Khwan shû, or Digest of Works of Kû-žze, chap. 26 (the first chapter on the Yî), art. 16.

14:14:1 Analects IX, viii.

14:14:2 Lî Kî VIII, iv, 16.

14:14:3 Shû V, xxii, 19.

15:15:1 See Mayers' Chinese Reader's Manual, pp. 56, 57.

17:17:1 Certainly it was not Confucius. See on the authorship of the Appendixes, and especially of Appendix III, in the next chapter.

18:18:1 For this dissection, which may also be called reductio ad absurdum, of the Lo writing, I was indebted first to P. Regis. See his Y-King I, p. 60. But Kû Hsî also has got it in the Appendix to his 'Lessons on the Yî for the Young.'

19:19:1 The Shû IV, xi, 1, 2.

19:19:2 These were well-known instances of Shâu's wanton cruelty. Observing some people one winter's day wading through a stream, he ordered their legs to be cut through at the shank-bone, that he might see the marrow which could so endure the cold. 'The good man' was a relative of his own, called Pî-kan. Having enraged Shâu by the sternness of his rebukes, the tyrant ordered his heart to be cut out, that he might see the structure of a sage's heart.

20:20:1 We do not know what these contrivances were. But to please his wife, the infamous Tâ-kî, Shâu had made 'the Heater' and, 'the Roaster,' two instruments of torture. The latter was a copper pillar laid above a pit of burning charcoal, and made slippery; culprits were forced to walk along it.

20:20:2 The Shû V, i, Sect. iii, 2, 3.

20:20:3 Shû II, ii, 18.

20:20:4 Shû V, iv, 20-31.

21:21:1 In the Book of Poetry we have Wăn's grandfather (Than-fû, III, i, ode 3, 3) divining, and his son (king Wû, III, i, ode 10. 7) doing the same.

THE APPENDIXES Subjects of the chapter

Text is ascribed, without dissentient voice, to king Wăn, the founder of the Kâu dynasty, and his son Tan, better known as the duke of Kâu; and I have, in the preceding chapters, given reasons for accepting that view. As regards the portion ascribed to king Wăn, the evidence of the third of the Appendixes and the statement of Sze-mâ Khien are as positive as could be desired; and as regards that ascribed to his son, there is no ground for calling in question the received tradition. The Appendixes have all been ascribed to Confucius, though not with entirely the same unanimity. Perhaps I have rather intimated my own opinion that this view cannot be sustained. I have pointed out that, even if it be true, between six and seven centuries elapsed after the Text of the classic appeared before the Appendixes were written; and I have said that, considering this fact, I cannot regard its two parts as a homogeneous whole, or as constituting one book in the ordinary acceptation of that name. Before entering on the question of the authorship, a very brief statement of the nature and number of the Appendixes will be advantageous.

p. 27

Number and Nature of the Appendixes

Text is divided into two sections, called the Upper and Lower, or, as we should say, the first and second, and then the commentary on each section is made to form a separate Appendix. I have found it more convenient in the translation which follows to adopt a somewhat different arrangement.

My first Appendix, in two sections, embraces the first and second 'wings,' consisting of remarks on the paragraphs by king Wăn in the two parts of the Text.

My second Appendix, in two sections, embraces the third and fourth 'wings,' consisting of remarks on the symbolism of the duke of Kâu in his explanation of the individual lines of the hexagrams.

My third Appendix, in two sections, embraces the fifth and sixth 'wings,' which bear the name in Chinese of 'Appended Sentences,' and constitute what is called by many 'the Great Treatise.' Each wing has been divided into twelve chapters of very different length, and I have followed this arrangement in my sections. This is the most important Appendix. It has less of the nature of commentary than the previous four wings. While explaining much of what is found in the Text, it diverges to the origin of the trigrams, the methods pursued in the practice of divination, the rise of many arts in the progress of civilisation, and other subjects.

My fourth Appendix, also in two sections, forms the seventh 'wing.' It is confined to an amplification of the expositions of the first and second hexagrams by king Wăn and his son, purporting to show how they may be interpreted of man's nature and doings.

My fifth Appendix is the eighth 'wing,' called 'Discourses on the Trigrams.' It treats of the different arrangement of these in respect of the seasons of the year and the cardinal points by Fû-hsî and king Wăn. It contains also one paragraph, which might seem to justify the view that there is a mythology in the Yî.

My sixth Appendix, in two sections, is the ninth 'wing,'--

p. 28

[paragraph continues] 'a Treatise on the Sequence of the Hexagrams,' intended to trace the connexion of meaning between them in the order in which they follow one another in the Text of king Wăn.

My seventh Appendix is the tenth 'wing,' an exhibition of the meaning of the 64 hexagrams, not taken in succession, but promiscuously and at random, as they approximate to or are opposed to one another in meaning.

The authorship of the Appendixes to enquire next who wrote them, and especially whether it be possible to accept the dictum that they were all written by Confucius. If they have come down to us, bearing unmistakeably the stamp of the mind and pencil of the great sage, we cannot but receive them with deference, not to say with reverence. If, on the contrary, it shall appear that with great part of them he had nothing to do, and that it is not certain that any part of them is from him, we shall feel entirely at liberty to exercise our own judgment on their contents, and weigh them in the balances of our reason.

None of the Appendixes, it is to be observed, bear the

There is no superscription of Confucius on any of the Appendixes superscription of Confucius. There is not a single sentence in any one of them ascribing it to him. I gave in the first chapter, on p. 2, the earliest testimony that these treatises were produced by him. It is that of Sze-mâ Khien, whose 'Historical Records' must have appeared about the year 100 before our era. He ascribes all the Appendixes, except the last two of them, which he does not mention at all, expressly to Confucius; and this, no doubt, was the common belief in the fourth century after the sage's death.

But when we look for ourselves into the third and fourth Appendixes--the fifth, sixth, and seventh 'wings'--both

The third and fourth Appendixes evidently not from Confucius of which are specified by Khien, we find it impossible to receive his statement about them. What is remarkable in both parts of the third is, the frequent occurrence of the formula, 'The Master said,' familiar to all readers of the Confucian Analects. Of course, the

p. 29

sentence following that formula, or the paragraph covered by it, was, in the judgment of the writer, in the language of Confucius; but what shall we say of the portions preceding and following? If he were the author of them, he would not thus be distinguishing himself from himself. The formula occurs in the third Appendix at least twenty-three times. Where we first meet with it, Kû Hsî has a note to the effect that 'the Appendixes having been all made by Confucius, he ought not to be himself introducing the formula, "The Master said;" and that it may be presumed, wherever it occurs, that it is a subsequent addition to the Master's text.' One instance will show the futility of this attempt to solve the difficulty. The tenth chapter of Section i commences with the 59th paragraph:--

'In the Yî there are four things characteristic of the way of the sages. We should set the highest value on its explanations, to guide us in speaking; on its changes, for the initiation of our movements; on its emblematic figures, for definite action, as in the construction of implements; and on its prognostications, for our practice of divination.'

This is followed by seven paragraphs expanding its statements, and we come to the last one of the chapter which says,--'The Master said, "Such is the import of the statement that there are four things in the Yî, characteristic of the way of the sages."' I cannot understand how it could be more fully conveyed to us that the compiler or compilers of this Appendix were distinct from the Master whose words they quoted, as it suited them, to confirm or illustrate their views.

In the fourth Appendix, again, we find a similar occurrence of the formula of quotation. It is much shorter than the third, and the phrase, 'The Master said,' does not come before us so frequently; but in the thirty-six paragraphs that compose the first section we meet with it six times.

Moreover, the first three paragraphs of this Appendix are older than its compilation, which could not have taken place till after the death of Confucius, seeing it professes to quote his words. They are taken in fact from a narrative of the Žo Kwan, as having been spoken by a marchioness-dowager

p. 30

of Lû fourteen years before Confucius was born. To account for this is a difficult task for the orthodox critics among the Chinese literati. Kû Hsî attempts to perform it in this way:--that anciently there was the explanation given in these paragraphs of the four adjectives employed by king Wăn to give the significance of the first hexagram; that it was employed by Mû Kiang of Lû; and that Confucius also availed himself of it, while the chronicler used, as be does below, the phraseology of 'The Master said,' to distinguish the real words of the sage from such ancient sayings. But who was 'the chronicler?' No one can tell. The legitimate conclusion from KO's criticism is, that so much of the Appendix as is preceded by 'The Master said' is from Confucius,--so much and no more. I am thus obliged to come to the conclusion that Confucius had nothing to do with the composition of these two Appendixes, and that they were not put together till after his death. I have no pleasure in differing from the all but unanimous opinion of Chinese critics and commentators. What is called 'the destructive criticism' has no attractions for me; but when an opinion depends on the argument adduced to support it, and that argument turns out to be of no weight, you can no longer set your seal to this, that the opinion is true. This is the position in which an examination of the internal evidence as to the authorship of the third and fourth Appendixes has placed me. Confucius could not be their author. This conclusion weakens the

Bearing of the conclusion as to the third and fourth on the other Appendixes confidence which we have been accustomed to place in the view that 'the ten wings' were to be ascribed to him unhesitatingly. The view has broken down in the case of three of them;--possibly there is no sound reason for holding the Confucian origin of the other seven.

I cannot henceforth maintain that origin save with bated breath. This, however, can be said for the first two Appendixes in my arrangement, that there is no evidence against their being Confucian like the fatal formula, 'The Master said.' So it is with a good part of my fifth Appendix; but the concluding paragraphs of it, as well as the seventh

p. 31

[paragraph continues] Appendix, and the sixth also in a less degree, seem too trivial to be the production of the great man. As a translator of every sentence both in the Text and the Appendixes, I confess my sympathy with P. Regis, when he condenses the fifth Appendix into small space, holding that the 8th and following paragraphs are not worthy to be translated. 'They contain,' he says, 'nothing but the mere enumeration of things, some of which may be called Yang, and others Yin, without any other cause for so thinking being given. Such a method of procedure would be unbecoming any philosopher, and it cannot be denied to be unworthy of Confucius, the chief of philosophers 31:1.'

I could not characterise Confucius as 'the chief of philosophers,' though he was a great moral philosopher, and has been since he went out and in among his disciples, the best teacher of the Chinese nation. But from the first time my attention was directed to the Yî, I regretted that he had stooped to write the parts of the Appendixes now under remark. It is a relief not to be obliged to receive them as his. Even the better treatises have no other claim to that character besides the voice of tradition, first heard nearly 400 years after his death.

The first bears in Chinese the name of Thwan Kwan, 'Treatise on the Thwan,' thwan being the name given

The first Appendix to the paragraphs in which Wăn expresses his sense of the significance of the hexagrams. He does not tell us why he attaches to each hexagram such and such a meaning, nor why he predicates good fortune or bad fortune in connexion with it, for he speaks oracularly, after the manner of a diviner. It is the object of the writer of this Appendix to show the processes of king Wăn's thoughts in these operations, how he looked at the component trigrams with their symbolic intimations, their attributes and qualities, and their linear composition, till he could not think otherwise of the figures than he did. All these considerations are sometimes taken into account,

p. 32

and sometimes even one of them is deemed sufficient. In this way some technical characters appear which are not found in the Text. The lines, for instance, and even whole trigrams are distinguished as kang and zâu, hard or strong' and 'weak or soft.' The phrase Kwei-shăn, 'spirits,' or 'spiritual beings,' occurs, but has not its physical signification of 'the contracting and expanding energies or operations of nature.' The names Yin and Yang, mentioned above on pp. 15, 16, do not present themselves.

I delineated, on p. 11, the eight trigrams of Fû-hsî, and gave their names., with the natural objects they are said to represent, but did. not mention the attributes, the virtutes, ascribed to them. Let me submit here a table of them, with those qualities, and the points of the compass to which they are referred. I must do this because king Wăn made a change in the geographical arrangement of them, to which reference is made perhaps in his text and certainly in this treatise. He also is said to have formed an entirely different theory as to the things represented by the trigrams, which it will be well to give now, though it belongs properly to the fifth Appendix.

FÛ-HSÎ'S TRIGRAMS p. 33

The natural objects and phenomena thus represented are found up and down in the Appendixes. It is impossible to believe that the several objects were assigned to the several figures on any principles of science, for there is no indication of science in the matter: it is difficult even to suppose that they were assigned on any comprehensive scheme of thought. Why are tui and khân used to represent water in different conditions, while khân, moreover, represents the moon? How is sun set apart to represent things so different as wind and wood? At a very early time the Chinese spoke of 'the five elements,' meaning water, fire, wood, metal, and earth; but the trigrams were not made to indicate them, and it is the general opinion that there is no reference to them in the Yî 33:1.

Again, the attributes assigned to the trigrams are learned mainly from this Appendix and the fifth. We do not readily get familiar with them, nor easily accept them all. It is impossible for us to tell whether they were a part of the jargon of divination before king Wăn, or had grown up between his time and that of the author of the Appendixes.

King Wăn altered the arrangement of the trigrams so that not one of them should stand at the same point of the compass as in the ancient plan. He made them also representative of certain relations among themselves, as if they composed a family of parents and children. It will be sufficient at present to give a table of his scheme.

KING WĂN'S TRIGRAMS p. 34

There is thus before us the apparatus with which the writer of the Appendix accomplishes his task. Let me select one of the shortest instances of his work. The

fourteenth hexagram is , called Tâ Yû, and meaning 'Possessing in great abundance.' King Wăn saw in it the symbol of a government prosperous and realising all its proper objects; but all that he wrote on it was 'Tâ Yû (indicates) great progress and success.' Unfolding that view of its significance, the Appendix says:--

'In Tâ Yû the weak (line) has the place of honour, is grandly central, and (the strong lines) above and below respond to it. Hence comes its name of "Possession of what is great." The attributes (of its constituent trigrams, khien and lî) are strength and vigour, elegance and brightness. (The ruling line in it) responds to (the ruling line in the symbol of) heaven, and its actings are (consequently all) at the proper times. Thus it is that it is said to indicate great progress and success.'

In a similar way the paragraphs on all the other 63 hexagrams are gone through; and, for the most part, with success. The conviction grows upon the student that the writer has on the whole apprehended the mind of king Wăn.

I stated, on p. 32, that the name kwei-shăn occurs

The name Kwei-shăn in this Appendix. It has not yet, however, received the semi-physical, semi-metaphysical signification which the comparatively modern scholars of the Sung dynasty give to it. There are two passages where it is found;--the second paragraph on Khien, the fifteenth hexagram, and the third on Făng, the fifty-fifth. By consulting them the reader will be able to form an opinion for himself. The term kwei denotes specially the human spirit disembodied, and shăn is used for spirits whose seat is in heaven. I do not see my way to translate them, when used binomially together, otherwise than by spiritual beings or spiritual agents.

Kû Hsî once had the following question suggested by the second of these passages put to him:--'Kwei-shăn is a name for the traces of making and transformation; but when it is said that (the interaction of) heaven and earth

p. 35

is now vigorous and abundant, and now dull and void, growing and diminishing according to the seasons, that constitutes the traces of making and transformation; why should the writer further speak of the Kwei-shăn?' He replied, 'When he uses the style of "heaven and earth," he is speaking of the result generally; but in ascribing it to the Kwei-shăn, he is representing the traces of their effective interaction, as if there were men (that is, some personal agency) bringing it about 35:1.' This solution merely explains the language away. When we come to the fifth Appendix, we shall understand better the views of the period when these treatises were produced.

The single character shăn is used in explaining the thwan on Kwân, the twentieth hexagram, where we read:--

'In Kwân we see the spirit-like way of heaven, through which the four seasons proceed without error. The sages, in accordance with (this) spirit-like way, laid down their instructions, and all under heaven yield submission to them.'

The author of the Appendix delights to dwell on the changing phenomena taking place between heaven and earth, and which he attributes to their interaction; and he was penetrated evidently with a sense of the harmony between the natural and spiritual worlds. It is this sense, indeed, which vivifies both the thwan and the explanation of them.

The second Appendix figures. The work here, however, is accomplished with less trouble and more briefly. The whole bears the name of Hsiang Kwan, 'Treatise on the Symbols' or 'Treatise on the Symbolism (of the Yî).'

p. 36

[paragraph continues] If there were reason to think that it came in any way from Confucius, I should fancy that I saw him sitting with a select class of his disciples around him. They read the duke's Text column after column, and the master drops now a word or two, and now a sentence or two, that illuminate the meaning. The disciples take notes on their tablets, or store his remarks in their memories, and by and by they write them out with the whole of the, Text or only so much of it as is necessary. Whoever was the original lecturer, the Appendix, I think, must have grown up in this way.

It would not be necessary to speak of it at greater length, if it were not that the six paragraphs on the symbols of the duke of Kâu are always preceded by one which is called 'the Great Symbolism,' and treats of the trigrams composing the hexagram, how they go together to form the six-lined figure, and how their blended meaning appears in the institutions and proceedings of the great men and kings of former days, and of the superior men of all time. The paragraph is for the most part, but by no means always, in harmony with the explanation of the hexagram by king Wăn, and a place in the Thwan Kwan would be more appropriate to it. I suppose that, because it always begins with the mention of the two symbolical trigrams, it is made, for the sake of the symmetry, to form a part of the treatise on the Symbolism of the Yî.

I will give a few examples of the paragraphs of the Great Symbolism. The first hexagram is formed

The Great Symbolism by a repetition of the trigram Khien representing heaven, and it is said on it:--'Heaven in its motion (gives) the idea of strength. The superior man, in accordance with this, nerves himself to ceaseless activity.'

The second hexagram is formed by a repetition of the trigram Khwăn representing the earth, and it is said on it:--'The capacious receptivity of the earth is what is denoted by Khwăn. The superior man, in accordance with this, with his large virtue, supports men and things.'

p. 37

The forty-fourth hexagram, called Kâu , is formed by the trigrams Sun , representing wind, and Khien representing heaven or the sky, and it is said on it:--'(The symbol of) wind, beneath that of the sky, forms Kâu. In accordance with this, the sovereign distributes his charges, and promulgates his announcements throughout the four quarters (of the kingdom).'

The fifty-ninth hexagram, called Hwân is formed by the trigrams Khân , representing water, and Sun , representing wind, and it is said on it:--(The symbol of) water and (that of wind) above it form Hwân. The ancient kings, in accordance with this, presented offerings to God, and established the ancestral temple.' The union of the two trigrams suggested to king Wăn the idea of dissipation in the alienation of men from the Supreme Power, and of the minds of parents from their children; a condition which the wisdom of the ancient kings saw could best be met by the influences of religion.

One more example. The twenty-sixth hexagram, called Tâ Khû , is formed of the trigrams Khien, representing heaven or the sky, and Kân , representing a mountain, and it is said on it:--'(The symbol of) heaven in the midst of a mountain forms Tâ Khû. The superior man, in accordance with this, stores largely in his memory the words of former men and their conduct, to subserve the accumulation of his virtue.' We are ready to exclaim and ask, 'Heaven, the sky, in the midst of a mountain! Can there be such a thing?' and Kû Hsî will tell us in reply, 'No, there cannot be such a thing in reality; but you can conceive it for the purpose of the symbolism.'

From this and the other examples adduced from the Great Symbolism, it is clear that, so far as its testimony bears on the subject, the trigrams of Fû-hsî did not receive their form and meaning with a deep intention that they should serve as the basis of a philosophical scheme concerning the constitution of heaven and earth and all that

p. 38

is in them. In this Appendix they are used popularly, just as one

'Finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, Sermons in stones, and good in everything.'

The writer moralises from them in an edifying manner. There is ingenuity, and sometimes instruction also, in what he says, but there is no mystery. Chinese scholars and gentlemen, however, who have got some little acquaintance with western science, are fond of saying that all the truths of electricity, heat, light, and other branches of European physics, are in the eight trigrams. When asked how then they and their countrymen have been and are ignorant of those truths, they say that they have to learn them first from western books, and then, looking into the Yî, they see that they were all known to Confucius more than 2000, years ago. The vain assumption thus manifested is childish; and until the Chinese drop their hallucination about the Yî as containing all things that have ever been dreamt of in all philosophies, it will prove a stumbling-block to them, and keep them from entering on the true path of science.

The third Appendix 'The Great Treatise.' It will appear singular to the reader, as it has always done to myself, that neither in the Text, nor in the first two Appendixes, does the character called Yî, which gives its name to the classic, once appear. It is the symbol of 'change,' and is formed from the character for 'the sun' placed over that for 'the moon 38:1.' As the sun gives place to the moon, and the moon to the sun, so is change always proceeding in the phenomena of nature and the experiences of society. We meet with the character nearly fifty times in this Appendix;--applied most commonly to the Text of our classic, so that Yî King or Yî Shû is 'the Classic or Book of Changes.' It is also applied often to the changes in the lines of the

p. 39

figures, made by the manipulations of divination, apart from any sentence or oracle concerning them delivered by king Wăn or his son. There is therefore the system of the Yî as well as the book of the Yî. The definition of the name which is given in one paragraph will suit them both:--'Production and reproduction is what is called (the process of) change 39:1.' In nature there is no vacuum. When anything is displaced, what displaces it takes the empty room. And in the lineal figures, the strong and the weak lines push each other out.

Now the remarkable thing asserted is, that the

Harmony between the lines ever changing and the changes in external phenomena changes in the lines of the figures and the changes of external phenomena show a wonderful harmony and concurrence. We read:--

'The Yî was made on a principle of accordance with heaven and earth, and shows us therefore, without rent or confusion, the course (of things) in heaven and earth 39:2.'

'There is a similarity between the sage and heaven and earth; and hence there is no contrariety in him to them. His knowledge embraces all things, and his course is intended to be helpful to all under the sky; and therefore he falls into no error. He acts according to the exigency of circumstances, without being carried away by their current; he rejoices in Heaven, and knows its ordinations; and hence he has no anxieties. He rests in his own (present) position, and cherishes the spirit of generous benevolence; and hence he can love (without reserve) 39:3.'

'(Through the Yî) he embraces, as in a mould or enclosure, the transformations of heaven and earth without any error; by an ever-varying adaptation he completes (the nature of) all things without exception; he penetrates to a knowledge of the course of day and night (and all other correlated phenomena). It is thus that his operation is spirit-like, unconditioned by place, while the changes (which he produces) are not restricted to any form.'

One more quotation:--

'The sage was able to survey all the complex phenomena under the sky. He then considered in his mind how they could be p. 40

figured, and (by means of the diagrams) represented their material forms and their character 40:1.'

All that is thus predicated of the sage, or ancient sages, though the writer probably had Fû-hsî in his mind, is more than sufficiently extravagant, and reminds us of the language in 'the Doctrine of the Mean,' that 'the sage, able to assist the transforming and nourishing powers of heaven and earth, may with heaven and earth form a ternion 40:2.'

I quoted largely, in the second chapter, from this Appendix the accounts which it gives of the formation of the lineal figures. There is no occasion to return to that subject. Let us suppose the figures formed. They seem to have

Divination the significance, when looked at from certain points of view, which have been determined for us by king Wăn and the duke of Kâu. But this does not amount to divination. How can the lines be made to serve this purpose? The Appendix professes to tell us.

Before touching on the method which it describes, let me observe that divination was practised in China from a very early time. I will not say 5,200 years

Ancient divination ago, in the days of Fû-hsî, for I cannot repress doubts of his historical personality; but as soon as we tread the borders of something like credible history, we find it existing. In the Shû King, in a document that purports to be of the twenty-third century B. C. 40:3, divination by means of the tortoise-shell is mentioned; and somewhat later we find that method continuing, and also divination by the lineal figures, manipulated by means of the stalks of a plant 40:4, the Ptarmica Sibirica 40:5, which is still cultivated on and about the grave of Confucius, where I have myself seen it growing.

The object of the divination, it should be acknowledged, Object of the divination was not to discover future events absolutely, as if they could be known beforehand 40:6, but p. 41

to ascertain whether certain schemes, and conditions of events contemplated by the consulter, would turn out luckily or unluckily. But for the actual practice the stalks of the plant were necessary; and I am almost afraid to write that this Appendix teaches that they were produced by Heaven of such a nature as to be fit for the purpose. 'Heaven,' it says, in the 73rd paragraph of Section i, quoted above on p. 14, 'Heaven produced the spirit-like things.' The things were the tortoise and the plant, and in paragraph 68, the same quality of being shăn, or 'spirit-like,' is ascribed to them. Occasionally, in the field of Chinese literature, we meet with doubts as to the efficacy of divination, and the folly of expecting any revelation of the character of the future from an old tortoise-shell and a handful of withered twigs 41:1; but when this Appendix was made, the writer had not attained to so much common sense. The stalks were to him 'spirit-like,' possessed of

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a subtle and invisible virtue that fitted them for use in divining.

Given the stalks with such virtue, the process of manipulating

Formation of the lineal figures by the divining stalks them so as to form the lineal figures is described (Section i, chap. 9, parr. 49-58), but it will take the student much time and thought to master the various operations. Forty-nine stalks were employed, which were thrice manipulated for each line, so that it took eighteen manipulations to form a hexagram. The lines were determined by means of the numbers derived from the River Map or scheme. Odd numbers gave strong or undivided lines, and even numbers gave the weak or divided. An important part was played in combining the lines, and forming the hexagrams by the four emblematic symbols, to which the numbers 9, 8, 7, 6 were appropriated 42:1. The figures having been formed, recourse was had for their interpretation to the thwan of king Wăn, and the emblematic sentences of the duke of Kâu. This was all the part which numbers played in the divination by the Yî, helping the operator to make up his lineal figure. An analogy has often been asserted between the numbers of the Yî and the numbers of Pythagoras; and certainly we might make ten, and more than ten, antinomies from these Appendixes in startling agreement with the ten principia of the Pythagoreans. But if Aristotle was correct in holding that Pythagoras regarded numbers as entities, and maintained that Number was the Beginning (Principle, ἀρχή) of things, the cause of their material existence, and of their

p. 43

modifications and different states, then the doctrine of the philosopher of Samos was different from that of the Yî 43:1, in which numbers come in only as aids in divining to form the hexagrams. Of course all divination is vain, nor is the method of the Yî less absurd than any other. The Chinese themselves have given it up in all circles above those of the professional quacks, and yet their scholars continue to maintain the unfathomable science and wisdom of these appended treatises!

It is in this Appendix that we first meet with the

The names Yin and Yang names yin and yang 43:2, of which I have spoken briefly on pp. 15, 16. Up to this point, instead of them, the names for the two elementary forms of the lines have been kang and zâu, which I have translated by 'strong and weak,' and which also occur here ten times. The following attempt to explain these different names appears in the fifth Appendix, paragraph 4:--

'Anciently when the sages made the Yî, it was with the design that its figures should be in conformity with the principles underlying the natures (of men and things), and the ordinances appointed (for them by Heaven). With this view they exhibited in them the way of heaven, calling (the lines) yin and yang; the way of earth, calling them the strong (or hard) and the weak (or soft); and the way of man, under the names of benevolence and righteousness. Each (trigram) embraced those three Powers, and being repeated, its full form consisted of six lines.'

However difficult it may be to make what is said here intelligible, it confirms what I have affirmed of the significance of the names yin and yang, as meaning bright and dark, derived from the properties of the sun and moon. We may use for these adjectives a variety of others, such as active and inactive, masculine and feminine, hot and cold, more or less analogous to them; but there arise the important questions,--Do we find yang and yin not merely used to indicate the quality of what they are applied

p. 44

to, but at the same time with substantival force, denoting what has the quality which the name denotes? Had the doctrine of a primary matter of an ethereal nature, now expanding and showing itself full of activity and power as yang, now contracting and becoming weak and inactive as yin:--had this doctrine become matter of speculation when this Appendix was written? The Chinese critics and commentators for the most part assume that it had. P. Regis, Dr. Medhurst, and other foreign Chinese scholars repeat their statements without question. I have sought in vain for proof of what is asserted. It took more than a thousand years after the closing of the Yî to fashion in the Confucian school the doctrine of a primary matter. We do not find it fully developed till the era of the Sung dynasty, and in our eleventh and twelfth centuries 44:1. To find it in the Yî is the logical, or rather illogical, error of putting 'the last first.' Neither creation nor cosmogony was before the mind of the author whose work I am analysing. His theme is the Yî,--the ever-changing phenomena of nature and experience. There is nothing but this in the 'Great Treatise' to task our powers;--nothing deeper or more abstruse.

p. 45

As in the first Appendix, so in this, the name kwei-shăn occurs twice; in paragraphs 21 and 50 of Section i. In the

The name Kwei-shăn former instance, each part of the name has its significance. Kwei denotes the animal soul or nature, and Shăn, the intellectual soul, the union of which constitutes the living rational man. I have translated them, it will be seen, by 'the anima and the animus.' Canon McClatchie gives for them 'demons and gods;' and Dr. Medhurst said on the passage, 'The kwei-shăns are evidently the expanding and contracting principles of human life The kwei-shăns are brought about by the dissolution of the human frame, and consist of the expanding and ascending shăn, which rambles about in space, and of the contracted and shrivelled kwei, which reverts to earth and nonentity 45:1.'

This is pretty much the same view as my own, though I would not here use the phraseology of 'expanding and contracting.' Canon McClatchie is consistent with himself, and renders the characters by 'demons and gods.'

In the latter passage it is more difficult to determine the exact meaning. The writer says, that 'by the odd numbers assigned to heaven and the even numbers assigned to earth, the changes and transformations are effected, and the spirit-like agencies kept in movement;' meaning that by means of the numbers the spirit-like lines might be formed on a scale sufficient to give a picture of all the changing phenomena, taking place, as if by a spiritual agency, in nature. Medhurst contents himself on it with giving the explanation of Kû Hsî, that 'the kwei-shăns refer to the contractions and expandings, the recedings and approachings of the productive and completing powers of the even and odd numbers 45:2.' Canon McClatchie does not follow his translation of the former passage and give here 'demons and gods,' but we have 'the Demon-god (i.e. Shang Tî) 45:3.' I shall refer to this version when considering the fifth Appendix. p. 46

The single character shăn occurs more than twenty times;--used now as a substantive, now as an adjective, Shan alone and again as a verb. I must refer the reader to the translation and notes for its various significance, subjoining in a note a list of the places where it occurs 46:1.

Much more might be said on the third Appendix, for the writer touches on many other topics, antiquarian and speculative, but a review of them would help us little in the study of the leading subject of the Yî. In passing on to the next treatise, I would only further say that the style of this and the author's manner of presenting his thoughts often remind the reader of 'the Doctrine of the Mean.' I am surprised that 'the Great Treatise' has never been ascribed to the author of that Doctrine, Žze-sze, the grandson of Confucius, whose death must have taken place between B. C. 400 and 450.

The fourth Appendix confined to an exposition of the Text on the first and second hexagrams, being an attempt to show that what is there affirmed of heaven and earth may also be applied to man, and that there is an essential agreement between the qualities ascribed to them, and the benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom, which are the four constituents of his moral and intellectual nature.

It is said by some of the critics that Confucius would have treated all the other hexagrams in a similar way, if his life had been prolonged, but we found special grounds for denying that Confucius had anything to do with the composition of this Appendix; and, moreover, I cannot think of any other figure that would have afforded to the author the same opportunity of discoursing about man. The style and method are after the manner of 'the Doctrine of the Mean' quite as much as those of 'the Great Treatise.' Several paragraphs, moreover, suggest to us the magniloquence of Mencius. It is said, for instance, by Žze-sze, of

p. 47

the sage, that 'he is the equal or correlate of Heaven 47:1,' and in this Appendix we have the sentiment expanded into the following:--

'The great man is he who is in harmony in his attributes with heaven and earth; in his brightness with the sun and moon; in his orderly procedure with the four seasons; and in his relation to what is fortunate and what is calamitous with the spiritual agents. He may precede Heaven, and Heaven will not act in opposition to him; he may follow Heaven, but will act only as Heaven at the time would do. If Heaven will not act in opposition to him, how much less will man! how much less will the spiritual agents 47:2!'

One other passage may receive our consideration:--

'The family that accumulates goodness is sure to have superabundant happiness, and the family that accumulates evil is sure to have superabundant misery 47:3.'

The language makes us think of the retribution of good and evil as taking place in the family, and not in the individual; the judgment is long deferred, but it is inflicted at last, lighting, however, not on the head or heads that most deserved it. Confucianism never falters in its affirmation of the difference between good and evil, and that each shall have its appropriate recompense; but it has little to say of the where and when and how that recompense will be given. The old classics are silent on the subject of any other retribution besides what takes place in time. About the era of Confucius the view took definite shape that, if the issues of good and evil, virtue and vice, did not take effect in the experience of the individual, they would certainly do so in that of his posterity. This is the prevailing doctrine among the Chinese at the present day; and one of the earliest expressions, perhaps the earliest expression, of it was in the sentence under our notice that has been copied from this Appendix into almost every moral treatise that circulates in China. A wholesome and an important truth it is, that 'the sins of parents are visited p. 48

on their children;' but do the parents themselves escape the curse? It is to be regretted that this short treatise, the only 'wing' of the Yî professing to set forth its teachings concerning man as man, does not attempt any definite reply to this question. I leave it, merely observing that it has always struck me as the result of an after-thought, and a wish to give to man, as the last of 'the Three Powers,' a suitable place in connexion with the Yî. The doctrine of 'the Three Powers' is as much out of place in Confucianism as that of 'the Great Extreme.' The treatise contains several paragraphs interesting in themselves, but it adds nothing to our understanding of the Text, or even of the object of the appended treatises, when we try to look at them as a whole.

The fifth Appendix which is made up of 'Remarks on the Trigrams.' It is shorter than the fourth, consisting of only 22 paragraphs, in some of which the author rises to a height of thought reached nowhere else in these treatises, while several of the others are so silly and trivial, that it is difficult, not to say impossible, to believe that they are the production of the same man. We find in it the earlier and later arrangement of the trigrams,--the former, that of Fû-hsî, and the latter, that of king Wăn; their names and attributes; the work of God in nature, described as a progress through the trigrams; and finally a distinctive, but by no means exhaustive, list of the natural objects, symbolised by them.

It commences with the enigmatic declaration that 'Anciently, when the sages made the Yî,' (that is, the lineal

First paragraph figures, and the system of divination by them),'in order to give mysterious assistance .to the spiritual Intelligences, they produced (the rules for the use of) the divining plant.' Perhaps this means no more than that the lineal figures were made to 'hold the mirror up to nature,' so that men by the study of them would understand more of the unseen and spiritual operations, to which the phenomena around them were owing, than they could otherwise do.

p. 49

The author goes on to speak of the Fû-hsî trigrams, and passes from them to those of king Wăn in paragraph 8. That and the following two are very remarkable; but before saying anything of them, I will go on to the 14th, which is the only passage that affords any ground for saying that there is a mythology in the Yî. It says:--

'Khien is (the symbol of) heaven, and hence is styled father.

Mythology of the Yî Khwăn is (the symbol of) earth, and hence is styled mother. Kăn (shows) the first application (of khwăn to khien), resulting in getting (the first of) its male (or undivided lines), and hence we call it the oldest son. Sun (shows) a first application (of khien to khwăn), resulting in getting (the first of) its female (or divided lines), and hence we call it the oldest daughter. Khân (shows) a second application (of khwăn to khien), and Lî a second (of khien to khwăn), resulting in the second son and second daughter. In Kăn and Tui we have a third application (of khwăn to khien and of khien to khwăn), resulting in the youngest son and youngest daughter.'

From this language has come the fable of a marriage between Khien and Khwăn, from which resulted the six other trigrams, considered as their three sons and three daughters; and it is not to be wondered at, if some men of active and ill-regulated imaginations should see Noah and his wife in those two primary trigrams, and in the others their three sons and the three sons' wives. Have we not in both cases an ogdoad? But I have looked in the paragraph in vain for the notion of a marriage-union between heaven and earth.

It does not treat of the genesis of the other six trigrams by the union of the two, but is a rude attempt to explain their forms when they were once existing 49:1. According to the idea of changes, Khien and Khwăn are continually varying their forms by their interaction. As here represented, the

p. 50

other trigrams are not 'produced 50:1' by a marriage-union, but from the application, literally the seeking, of one of them of Khwăn as much as of Khien--addressed to the other 50:2.

This way of speaking of the trigrams, moreover, as father and mother, sons and daughters, is not so old as Fû-hsî; nor have we any real proof that it originated with king Wăn. It is not of 'the highest antiquity.' It arose some time in 'middle antiquity,' and was known in the era of the Appendixes; but it had not prevailed then, nor has it prevailed since, to discredit and supersede the older nomenclature. We are startled when we come on it in the place which it occupies. And there it stands alone. It is not entitled to more attention than the two paragraphs that precede it, or the eight that follow it, none of which were thought by P. Regis worthy to be translated. I have just said that it stands 'alone.' Its existence, however, seems to me to be supposed in the fourth chapter, paragraphs 28-30, of the third Appendix, Section ii; but there only the trigrams of 'the six children' are mentioned, and nothing is said of 'the parents.' Kăn, khân, and kăn are referred to as being yang, and sun, lî, and tui as being yin. What is said about them is trifling and fanciful.

Leaving the question of the mythology of the Yî, of which I am myself unable to discover a trace, I now call attention to paragraphs 8-10, where the author speaks of the work of God in nature in all the year as a progress

Operation of God in nature throughout the year through the trigrams, and as being effected by His Spirit. The description assumes the peculiar arrangement of the trigrams, ascribed to king Win, and which I have exhibited above, on page 33 50:3. Father Regis adopts the general view p. 51

of Chinese critics that Win purposely altered the earlier and established arrangement, as a symbol of the disorganisation and disorder into which the kingdom had fallen 51:1. But it is hard to say why a man did something more than 3000 years ago, when he has not himself said anything about it. So far as we can judge from this Appendix, the author thought that king Win altered the existing order and position of the trigrams with regard to the cardinal points, simply for the occasion,--that he might set forth vividly his ideas about the springing, growth, and maturity in the vegetable kingdom from the labours of spring to the cessation from toil in winter. The marvel is that in doing this he brings God upon the scene, and makes Him in the various processes of nature the 'all and in all.'

The 8th paragraph says:--

'God comes forth in Kăn (to his producing work); He brings (His processes) into full and equal action in Sun; they are manifested to one another in Lî; the greatest service is done for Him in Khwăn; He rejoices in Tui; He struggles in Khien; He is comforted and enters into rest in Khân; and he completes (the work of) the year in Kăn.'

God is here named Tî, for which P. Regis gives the Latin 'Supremus Imperator,' and Canon McClatchie, after him, 'the Supreme Emperor.' I contend that 'God' is really the correct translation in English of Tî; but to render it here by 'Emperor' would not affect the meaning of the paragraph. Kû Hsî says that 'by Tî is intended the Lord and Governor of heaven;' and Khung Ying-tâ, about five centuries earlier than Kû, quotes Wang Pî, who died A.D.

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[paragraph continues] 249, to the effect that 'Tî is the lord who produces (all) things, the author of prosperity and increase.'

I must refer the reader to the translation in the body of the volume for the 9th paragraph, which is too long to be introduced here. As the 8th speaks directly of God, the 9th, we are told, 'speaks of all things following Him, from spring to winter, from the east to the north, in His progress throughout the year.' In words strikingly like those of the apostle Paul, when writing his Epistle to the Romans, Wan Khung-žung (of the Khang-hsî period) and his son, in their admirable work called, 'A New Digest of Collected Explanations of the Yî King,' say:--'God (Himself) cannot be seen; we see Him in the things (which He produces).' The first time I read these paragraphs with some understanding, I thought of Thomson's Hymn on the Seasons, and I have thought of it in connexion with them a hundred times since. Our English poet wrote:--

'These, as they change, Almighty Father, these

Are but the varied God. The rolling year

Is full of Thee. Forth in the pleasing spring

Thy beauty walks, Thy tenderness and love.

Then comes Thy glory in the summer months, With light and heat refulgent. Then Thy sun

Shoots full perfection through the swelling year.

Thy bounty shines in autumn unconfined, And spreads a common feast for all that lives.

In winter awful Thou!'

Prudish readers have found fault with some of Thomson's expressions, as if they savoured of pantheism. The language of the Chinese writer is not open to the same captious objection. Without poetic ornament, or swelling phrase of any kind, he gives emphatic testimony to God as renewing the face of the earth in spring, and not resting till He has crowned the year with His goodness.

And there is in the passage another thing equally wonderful. The 10th paragraph commences:--'When we speak of Spirit, we mean the subtle presence (and operation of God) with all things;' and the writer goes on to illustrate this sentiment from the action and influences symbolised

Concluding paragraphs

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by the six 'children,' or minor trigrams,--water and fire, thunder and wind, mountains and collections of water. Kû Hsî says, that there is that in the paragraph which he does not understand. Some Chinese scholars, however, have not been far from descrying the light that is in it. Let Liang Yin, of our fourteenth century, be adduced as an example of them. He says:--'The spirit here simply means God. God is the personality (literally, the body or substantiality) of the Spirit; the Spirit is God in operation. He who is lord over and rules all things is God; the subtle presence and operation of God with all things is by His Spirit.' The language is in fine accord with the definition of shăn or spirit, given in the 3rd Appendix, Section i, 32.

I wish that the Treatise on the Trigrams had ended with the 10th paragraph. The writer had gradually risen to a noble elevation of thought from which he plunges into a slough of nonsensical remarks which it would be difficult elsewhere to parallel. I have referred on p. 31 to the judgment of P. Regis about them. He could not receive them as from Confucius, and did not take the trouble to translate them, and transfer them to his own pages, My plan required me to translate everything published in China as a part of the Yî King; but I have given my reasons for doubting whether any portion of these Appendixes be really from Confucius. There is nothing that could better justify the supercilious disregard with which the classical literature of China is frequently treated than to insist on the concluding portion of this treatise as being from the pencil of its greatest sage. I have dwelt at some length on the 14th paragraph, because of its mythological semblance; but among the eight paragraphs that follow it, it would be difficult to award the palm for silliness. They are descriptive of the eight trigrams, and each one enumerates a dozen or more objects of which its subject is symbolical. The writer must have been fond of and familiar with horses. Khien, the symbol properly of heaven, suggests to him the idea of a good horse; an old horse; a lean horse; and a piebald. Kăn, the symbol of thunder, suggests the

p. 54

idea of a good neigher; of the horse with white hind-legs; of the prancing horse; and of one with a white star in his forehead. Khân, the symbol of water, suggests the idea of the horse with an elegant spine; of one with a high spirit; of one with a drooping head; and of one with a shambling step. The reader will think he has had enough of these symbolisings of the trigrams. I cannot believe that the earlier portions and this concluding portion of the treatise were by the same author. If there were any evidence that paragraphs 8 to 10 were by Confucius, I should say that they were worthy, even more than worthy, of him; what follows is mere drivel. Horace's picture faintly pourtrays the inconsistency between the parts:--

'Desinit in piscem mulier formosa superne.'

In reviewing the second of these Appendixes, I was led to speak of the original significance of the trigrams, in opposition to the views of some Chinese who pretend that they can find in them the physical truths discovered by the researches of western science. May I not say now, after viewing the phase of them presented in these paragraphs, that they were devised simply as aids to divination, and partook of the unreasonableness and uncertainty belonging to that?

The sixth Appendix more than once. It is not necessary to dwell on it at length. King Wăn, it has been seen, gave a name to each hexagram, expressive of the idea--some moral, social, or political truth--which he wished to set forth by means of it; and this name enters very closely into its interpretation. The author of this treatise endeavours to explain the meaning of the name, and also the sequence of the figures, or how it is that the idea of the one leads on to that of the next. Yet the reader must not expect to find in the 64 a chain 'of linked sweetness long drawn out.' The connexion between any two is generally sufficiently close; but on the whole the essays, which I have said they form, resemble 'a heap of orient pearls at random strung.' The changeableness of human

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affairs is a topic never long absent from the writer's mind. He is firmly persuaded that 'the fashion of the world passeth away.' Union is sure to give place to separation, and by and by that separation will issue in re-union.

There is nothing in the treatise to suggest anything about its authorship; and as the reader will see from the notes, we are perplexed occasionally by meanings given to the names that differ from the meanings in the Text.

The seventh Appendix Žâ Kwâ Kwan, or 'Treatise on the Lineal Figures taken promiscuously,'--not with regard to any sequence, but as they approximate, or are opposed, to one another in meaning. It is in rhyme, moreover, and this, as much as the meaning, determined, no doubt, the grouping of the hexagrams. The student will learn nothing of value from it; it is more a 'jeu d'esprit' than anything else.

Footnotes

31:31:1 Regis' Y-King, vol. ii, p 576.

33:33:1 See Kâo Yî's Hâi Yü Žhung Khâo, Book I, art. 3 (1790).

35:35:1 See the 'Collected Comments' on hexagram 55 in the Khang-hsî edition of the Yî (App. I). 'The traces of making and transformation' mean the ever changing phenomena of growth and decay. Our phrase 'Vestiges of Creation' might be used to translate the Chinese characters. See the remarks of the late Dr. Medhurst on the hexagrams 15 and 55 in his 'Dissertation on the Theology of the Chinese,' pp. 107-112. In hexagram 15, Canon McClatchie for kwei-shăn gives gods and demons;' in hexagram 55, the Demon-gods.'

38:38:1 = , the sun, placed over , a form of the old (= ), the moon.

39:39:1 III, i, 29 (chap. 5. 6).

39:39:2 III, i, 20 (chap. 4. 1).

39:39:3 III, i, 22.

40:40:1 III, i, 38 (chap. 8. 1).

40:40:2 Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xxii.

40:40:3 The Shû II, ii, 18.

40:40:4 The Shû V, iv, 20, 31.

40:40:5 See Williams' Syllabic Dictionary on the character .

40:40:6 Canon McClatchie (first paragraph of his Introduction) says:--'The Yî is regarded by the Chinese with peculiar veneration . . . . as containing a mine of p. 41 knowledge, which, if it were possible to fathom it thoroughly, would, in their estimation, enable the fortunate possessor to foretell all future events.' This misstatement does not surprise me so much as that Morrison, generally accurate on such points, should say (Dictionary, Part II, i, p. 1020, on the character ):--

'Of the odd and even numbers, the kwâ or lines of Fû-hsî are the visible signs; and it being assumed that these signs answer to the things signified, and from a knowledge of all the various combinations of numbers, a knowledge of all possible occurrences in nature may be previously known.' The whole article from which I take this sentence is inaccurately written. The language of the Appendix on the knowledge of the future given by the use of the Yî is often incautious, and a cursory reader may be misled; to a careful student, however, the meaning is plain. The second passage of the Shû, referred to above, treats of 'the Examination of Doubts,' and concludes thus:--'When the tortoise-shell and the stalks are both opposed to the views of men, there will be good fortune in stillness, and active operations will be unlucky.'

41:41:1 A remarkable instance is given by Lîu Kî (of the Ming dynasty, in the fifteenth century) in a story about Shâo Phing, who had been marquis of Tung-ling in the time of Žhin, but was degraded tinder Han. Having gone once to Sze-mâ Ki-kû, one of the most skilful diviners of the country, and wishing to know whether there would be a brighter future for him, Sze-mâ said, 'Ah! is it the way of Heaven to love any (partially)? Heaven loves only the virtuous. What intelligence is possessed by spirits? They are intelligent (only) by their connexion with men. The divining stalks are so much withered grass; the tortoise-shell is a withered bone. They are but things, and man is more intelligent than things. Why not listen to yourself instead of seeking (to learn) from things?' The whole piece is in many of the collections of Kû Wăn, or Elegant Writing.

42:42:1 These numbers are commonly derived from the River Scheme, in the outer sides of which are the corresponding marks:-- , opposite to ; ,opposite to ; opposite to ; and , opposite to . Hence the number 6 is assigned to , 7 to , 8 to , and 9 to . Hence also, in connexion with the formation of the figures by manipulation of the stalks, 9 becomes the number symbolical of the undivided line, as representing Khien and 6 of the divided line, as representing Khwăn But the late delineation of the map, as given on p. 15, renders all this uncertain, so far as the scheme is concerned. The numbers of the hsiang, however, may have been fixed, must have been fixed indeed, at an early period.

43:43:1 See the account of Pythagoras and his philosophy in Lewes' History of Philosophy, pp. 18-38 (1871).

43:43:2 See Section i, 24, 32, 35; Section ii, 28, 29, 30, 35.

44:44:1 As a specimen of what the ablest Sung scholars teach, I may give the remarks (from the I Collected Comments') of Kû Kăn (of the same century as Kû Hsî, rather earlier) on the 4th paragraph of Appendix V:--In the Yî there is the Great Extreme. When we speak of the yin and yang, we mean the air (or ether) collected in the Great Void. When we speak of the Hard and Soft, we mean that ether collected, and formed into substance. Benevolence and righteousness have their origin in the great void, are seen in the ether substantiated, and move under the influence of conscious intelligence. Looking at the one origin of all things we speak of their nature; looking at the endowments given to them, we speak of the ordinations appointed (for them). Looking at them as (divided into) heaven, earth, and men, we speak of their principle. The three are one and the same. The sages wishing that (their figures) should be in conformity with the principles underlying the natures (of men and things) and the ordinances appointed (for them), called them (now) yin and yang, (now) the hard and the soft, (now) benevolence and righteousness, in order thereby to exhibit the ways of heaven, earth, and men; it is a view of them as related together. The trigrams of the Yî contain the three Powers; and when they are doubled into hexagrams, there the three Powers unite and are one. But there are the changes and movements of their (several) ways, and therefore there are separate places for the yin and yang, and reciprocal uses of the hard and the soft.'

45:45:1 Dissertation on the Theology of the Chinese, pp. 111, 112.

45:45:2 Theology of the Chinese, p. 122.

45:45:3 Translation of the Yî King, p. 312.

46:46:1 Section i, 23, 32, 51, 58, 62, 64, 67, 68, 69, 73, 76, 81; Section ii, 11, 15, 33, 34, 41, 45.

47:47:1 Kung-yung xxxi, 4.

47:47:2 Section i, 34. This is the only paragraph where kwei-shăn occurs.

47:47:3 Section ii, 5.

49:49:1 This view seems to be in accordance with that of Wû Khăng (of the Yüan dynasty), as given in the 'Collected Comments' of the Khang-hsî edition. The editors express their approval of it in preference to the interpretation of Kû Hsî, who understood the whole to refer to the formation of the lineal figures, the 'application' being 'the manipulation of the stalks to find the proper line.'

50:50:1 But the Chinese term Shăng , often rendered 'produced,' must not be pressed, so as to determine the method of production, or the way in which one thing comes from another.

50:50:2 The significance of the mythological paragraph is altogether lost in Canon McClatchie's version:--'Khien is Heaven, and hence he is called Father; Khwăn is Earth, and hence she is called Mother; Kăn is the first male, and hence he is called the eldest son,' &c. &c.

50:50:3 The reader will understand the difference in the two arrangements better by a reference to the circular representations of them on Plate III.

51:51:1 E. g. 1, 23, 24:--'Observant etiam philosophi (lib. 15 Sinicae philosophiae Sing-11) principem. Wăn-wang antiquum octo symbolorum, unde aliae figurae omnes pendent, ordinem invertisse; quo ipsa imperii suis temporibus subversio graphice exprimi poterat, mutatis e naturali loco, quem genesis dederat, iis quatuor figuris, quae rerum naturalium pugnis ac dissociationibus, quas posterior labentis anni pars afferre solet, velut in antecessum, repraesentandis idoneae videbantur; v. g. si symbolum Lî, ignis, supponatur loco symboli Khân, aquae, utriusque elementi inordinatio principi visa est non minus apta ad significandas ruinas et clades reipublicae male ordinatae, quam naturales ab hieme aut imminente aut saeviente rerum generatarum corruptiones.' See also pp. 67, 68.

THE KHIEN HEXAGRAM

Explanation of the entire figure by king Wăn

Khien (represents) what is great and originating, penetrating, advantageous, correct and firm.

Explanation of the separate lines by the duke of Kâu.

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7. (The lines of this hexagram are all strong and undivided, as appears from) the use of the number NINE. If the host of dragons (thus) appearing were to divest themselves of their heads, there would be good fortune.

Footnotes

58:I The Text under each hexagram consists of one paragraph by king Wăn, explaining the figure as a whole, and of six (in the case of hexagrams 1 and 2, of seven) paragraphs by the duke of Kâu, explaining the individual lines. The explanatory notices introduced above to this effect will not be repeated. A double space will be used to mark off the portion of king Wăn from that of his son.

Each hexagram consists of two of the trigrams of Fû-hsî, the lower being called 'the inner,' and the one above 'the outer.' The lines, however, are numbered from one to six, commencing with the lowest. To denote the number of it and of the sixth line, the terms for commencing' and 'topmost' are used. The intermediate lines are simply 'second,' 'third,' &c. As the lines must be either whole or divided, technically called strong and weak, yang and yin, this distinction is indicated by the application to them of the numbers nine and six. All whole lines are nine, all divided lines, six.

Two explanations have been proposed of this application of these numbers. The Khien trigram, it is said, contains 3 strokes ( ), and the Khwăn 6 ( ). But the yang contains the yin in itself, and its representative number will be 3 + 6 = 9, while the yin, not containing the yang, will only have its own number or 6. This explanation, entirely arbitrary, is new deservedly abandoned. The other is based on the use of the 'four Hsiang,' or emblematic figures ( the great or old yang, the young yang, the old yin, and the young yin). To these are assigned (by what process is unimportant for our present purpose) the numbers 9, 8, 7, 6. They were 'the old yang,' represented by 9, and 'the old yin,' represented by 6, that, in the manipulation of the stalks to form new diagrams, determined the changes of figure; and so 9 and 6 came to be used as the p. 59 names of a yang line and a yin line respectively. This explanation is now universally acquiesced in. The nomenclature of first nine, nine two, &c., or first six, six two, &c., however, is merely a jargon; and I have preferred to use, instead of it, in the translation, in order to describe the lines, the names 'undivided' and 'divided.'

I. Does king Wăn ascribe four attributes here to Khien, or only two? According to Appendix IV, always by Chinese writers assigned to Confucius, he assigns four, corresponding to the principles of benevolence, righteousness, propriety, and knowledge in man's nature. Kû Hsî held that he assigned only two, and that we should translate, 'greatly penetrating,' and 'requires to be correct and firm,' two responses in divination. Up and down throughout the Text of the 64 hexagrams, we often find the characters thus coupled together. Both interpretations are possible. I have followed what is accepted as the view of Confucius. It would take pages to give a tithe of what has been written in justification of it, and to reconcile it with the other.

'The dragon' is the symbol employed by the duke of Kâu to represent 'the superior man' and especially 'the great man,' exhibiting the virtues or attributes characteristic of heaven. The creature's. proper home is in the water, but it can disport itself on the land, and also fly and soar aloft. It has been from the earliest time the emblem with the Chinese of the highest dignity and wisdom, of sovereignty and sagehood, the combination of which constitutes 'the great man.' One emblem runs through the lines of many of the hexagrams as here.

But the dragon appears in the sixth line as going beyond the proper limits. The ruling-sage has gone through all the sphere in which he is called on to display his attributes; it is time for him to relax. The line should not be always pulled tight; the bow should not be always kept drawn. The unchanging use p. 60 of force will give occasion for repentance. The moral meaning found in the line is that 'the high shall be abased.'

The meaning given to the supernumerary paragraph is the opposite of that of paragraph 6. The 'host of dragons without their heads' would give us the next hexagram, or Khwăn, made up of six divided lines. Force would have given place to submission, and haughtiness to humility; and the result would be good fortune. Such at least is the interpretation of the paragraph given in a narrative of the Žo-Kwan under B. C. 513. For further explanation of the duke of Kâu's meaning, see Appendixes II and IV.

THE KHWĂN HEXAGRAM

Khwăn (represents) what is great and originating, penetrating, advantageous, correct and having the firmness of a mare. When the superior man (here

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intended) has to make any movement, if he take the initiative, he will go astray; if he follow, he will find his (proper) lord. The advantageousness will be seen in his getting friends in the south-west, and losing friends in the north-east. If he rest in correctness and firmness, there will be good fortune.

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7. (The lines of this hexagram are all weak and divided, as appears from) the use of the number six. If those (who are thus represented) be perpetually correct and firm, advantage will arise.

Footnotes

61:II The same attributes are here ascribed to Khwăn, as in the former hexagram to Khien;--but with a difference. The figure, made up of six divided lines, expresses the ideal of subordination and docility. The superior man, represented by it, must not take the initiative; and by following he will find his lord,--the subject, that is of Khien. Again, the correctness and firmness is defined to be that of 'a mare,' 'docile and strong,' but a creature for the service of man. That it is not the sex of the animal which the writer has chiefly in mind is plain from the immediate mention of the superior man, and his lord.

That superior man will seek to bring his friends along with himself to serve his ruler. But according to the arrangement of the trigrams by king Wăn, the place of Khwăn is in the south-west, while the opposite quarter is occupied by the yang trigram Kăn, as in Figure 2, Plate III. All that this portion of the Thwan says is an instruction to the subject of the hexagram to seek for others of the same principles and tendencies with himself to serve their common lord. But in quietness and firmness will be his strength.

The symbolism of the lines is various. Paragraph 2 presents to us the earth itself, according to the Chinese conception of it, as a great cube. To keep his excellence under restraint, as in paragraph 3, is the part of a minister or officer, seeking not his own glory, but that of his ruler. Paragraph 4 shows its subject exercising a still greater restraint on himself than in paragraph 3. There is an interpretation of the symbolism of paragraph 5 in a narrative of the Žo Kwan, under the 12th year of duke Khâo, B.C. 530. 'Yellow' is one of the five 'correct' colours, and the colour of the earth. 'The lower garment' is a symbol of humility. The fifth line is the seat of honour. If its occupant possess the qualities indicated, he will be greatly fortunate.

See the note on the sixth line of hexagram 1. What is there said to be 'beyond the proper limits' takes place here 'in the wild.' The humble subject of the divided line is transformed into a p. 62 dragon, and fights with the true dragon, the subject of the undivided line. They fight and bleed, and their blood is of the colour proper to heaven or the sky, and the colour proper to the earth. Paragraph 7 supposes that the hexagram Khwăn should become changed into Khien--the result of which would be good.

THE KUN HEXAGRAM

Kun (indicates that in the case which it presupposes) there will be great progress and success, and the advantage will come from being correct and firm. (But) any movement in advance should not be (lightly) undertaken. There will be advantage in appointing feudal princes.

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Footnotes

63:III The character called Kun is pictorial, and was intended to show us how a plant struggles with difficulty out of the earth, rising gradually above the surface. This difficulty, marking the first stages in the growth of a plant, is used to symbolise the struggles that mark the rise of a state out of a condition of disorder, consequent on a great revolution. The same thing is denoted by the combination of the trigrams that form the figure;--as will be seen in the notes on it under Appendix II.

I have introduced within parentheses, in the translation, the words 'in the case which the hexagram presupposes.' It is necessary to introduce them. King Wăn and his son wrote, as they did in every hexagram, with reference to a particular state of affairs which they had in mind. This was the unspoken text which controlled and directed all their writing; and the student must try to get hold of this, if he would make his way with comfort and success through the Yî. Wăn saw the social and political world around him in great disorder, hard to be remedied. But he had faith in himself and the destinies of his House. Let there be prudence and caution, with unswerving adherence to the right; let the government of the different states be entrusted to good and able men:--then all would be well.

The first line is undivided, showing the strength of its subject. He will be capable of action, and his place in the trigram of mobility will the more dispose him to it. But above him is the p. 64 trigram of peril; and the lowest line of that, to which especially he must look for response and co-operation, is divided and weak. Hence arise the ideas of difficulty in advancing, the necessity of caution, and the advantage of his being clothed with authority.

To the subject of the second line, divided, advance is still more difficult. He is weak in himself; he is pressed by the subject of the strong line below him. But happily that subject, though strong, is correct; and above in the fifth line, in the place of authority, is the strong one, union with whom and the service of whom should be the objects pursued. All these circumstances suggested to the duke of Kâu the idea of a young lady, sought in marriage by a strong wooer, when marriage was unsuitable, rejecting him, and finally, after ten years, marrying a more suitable, the only suitable, match for her.

The third line is divided, not central, and the number of its place is appropriate to the occupancy of a strong line. All these things should affect the symbolism of the line. But the outcome of the whole hexagram being good, the superior man sees the immediate danger and avoids it.

The subject of the fourth line, the first of the upper trigram, has recourse to the strong suitor of line 1, the first of the lower trigram; and with his help is able to cope with the difficulties of the position, and go forward.

The subject of the fifth line is in the place of authority, and should show himself a ruler, dispensing benefits on a great scale. But he is in the very centre of the trigram denoting perilousness, and line 2, which responds to 5, is weak. Hence arises the symbolism, and great things should not be attempted.

The sixth line is weak; the third responding to it is also weak it is at the extremity of peril; the game is up. What can remain for its subject in such a case but terror and abject weeping?

THE MĂNG HEXAGRAM

Măng (indicates that in the case which it presupposes) there will be progress and success. I do not (go and) seek the youthful and inexperienced,

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but he comes and seeks me. When he shows (the sincerity that marks) the first recourse to divination, I instruct him. If he apply a second and third time, that is troublesome; and I do not instruct the troublesome. There will be advantage in being firm and correct.

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will come from doing him an injury. Advantage would come from warding off injury from him.

Footnotes

66:IV As Kun shows us plants struggling from beneath the surface, Măng suggests to us the small and. undeveloped appearance which they then present; and hence it came to be the symbol of youthful inexperience and ignorance. The object of the hexagram is to show how such a condition should be dealt with by the parent and ruler, whose authority and duty are represented by the second and sixth, the two undivided lines. All between the first and last sentences of the Thwan must be taken as an oracular response received by the party divining on the subject of enlightening the youthful ignorant. This accounts for its being more than usually enigmatical, and for its being partly rhythmical. See Appendix I, in loc.

The subject of the first line, weak, and at the bottom of the figure, is in the grossest ignorance. Let him be punished. If punishment avail to loosen the shackles and manacles from the mind, well; if not, and punishment be persevered with, the effect will be had.

On the subject of the second line, strong, and in the central place, devolves the task of enlightening the ignorant; and we have him discharging it with forbearance and humility. In proof of his generosity, it is said that 'he receives,' or learns from, even weak and ignorant women. He appears also as 'a son' taking the place of his father.

The third line is weak, and occupies an odd place belonging properly to an undivided line; nor is its place in the centre. All these things give the subject of it so bad a character.

The fourth line is far from both the second and sixth, and can get no help from its correlate,--the first line, weak as itself. What good can be done with or by the subject of it?

The fifth line is in the place of honour, and has for its correlate the strong line in the second place. Being weak in itself, it is taken as the symbol of a simple lad, willing to be taught.

The topmost line is strong, and in the highest place. It is natural, but unwise, in him to use violence in carrying on his educational measures. A better course is suggested to him.

THE HSÜ HEXAGRAM

Hsü intimates that, with the sincerity which is declared in it, there will be brilliant success. With firmness there will be good fortune; and it will be advantageous to cross the great stream.

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If he receive them respectfully, there will be good fortune in the end.

Footnotes

68:V Hsü means waiting. Strength confronted by peril might be expected to advance boldly and at once to struggle with it; but it takes the wiser plan of waiting till success is sure. This is the lesson of the hexagram. That 'sincerity is declared in it' is proved from the fifth line in the position of honour and authority, central, itself undivided and in an odd place. In such a case, nothing but firm correctness is necessary to great success.

'Going through a great stream,' an expression frequent in the Yî, may mean undertaking hazardous enterprises, or encountering great difficulties, without any special reference; but more natural is it to understand by the great stream' the Yellow river, which the lords of Kâu must cross in a revolutionary movement against the dynasty of Yin and its tyrant. The passage of it by king Wû, the son of Wăn in B. C. 1122, was certainly one of the greatest deeds in the history of China. It was preceded also by long waiting,' till the time of assured success came.

'The border' under line 1 means the frontier territory of the state. There seems no necessity for such a symbolism. 'The sand' and 'the mud' are appropriate with reference to the watery defile; but it is different with 'the border.' The subject of the line appears at work in his distant fields, not thinking of anything but his daily work; and he is advised to abide in that state and mind.

'The sand' of paragraph 2 suggests a nearer approach to the defile, but its subject is still self-restrained and waiting. I do not see what suggests the idea of his suffering from 'the strife of tongues.'

In paragraph 3 the subject is on the brink of the stream. His advance to that position has provoked resistance, which may result in his injury.

Line 4 has passed from the inner to the upper trigram, and entered on the scene of danger and strife;--'into the place of blood.' Its subject is 'weak and in the correct place for him;' he therefore retreats and escapes from the cavern, where he was engaged with his enemy.

Line 5 is strong and central, and in its correct place, being that of honour. All good qualities therefore belong to the subject of it, who has triumphed, and with firmness will triumph still more.

Line 6 is weak, and has entered deeply into the defile and its caverns. What will become of its subject? His correlate is the p. 69 strong line 3 below, which comes with its two companions to his help. If they are respectfully received, that help will prove effectual. P. Regis tries to find out a reference in these 'three guests' to three princes who distinguished themselves by taking part with Kâu in its struggle with Yin or Shang; see vol. i, pp. 279-282. I dare not be so confident of any historical reference.

THE SUNG HEXAGRAM

Sung intimates how, though there is sincerity in one's contention, he will yet meet with opposition and obstruction; but if he cherish an apprehensive caution, there will be good fortune, while, if he must prosecute the contention to the (bitter) end, there will be evil. It will be advantageous to see the great man; it will not be advantageous to cross the great stream.

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engage in the king's business, he will not (claim the merit of) achievement.

S. The fifth NINE, undivided, shows its subject contending;--and with great good fortune.

Footnotes

70:VI We have strength in the upper trigram, as if to regulate and control the lower, and peril in that lower as if looking out for an opportunity to assail the upper; or, as it may be represented, we have one's self in a state of peril matched against strength from without. All this is supposed to give the idea of contention or strife. But the undivided line in the centre of Khân is emblematic of sincerity, and gives a character to the whole figure. An individual, so represented, will be very wary, and have good fortune; but strife is bad, and if persevered in even by such a one, the effect will be evil. The fifth line, undivided, in an odd place, and central, serves as a representative of 'the great man,' whose agency is sure to be good; but the topmost line being also strong, and with its two companions, riding as it were, on the trigram of peril, its action is likely to be too rash for a great enterprise. See the treatise on the Thwan, in loc.

The subject of line 1 is weak and at the bottom of the figure. He may suffer a little in the nascent strife, but will let it drop; and the effect will be good.

Line 2 represents one who is strong, and has the rule of the lower trigram;--he has the mind for strife, and might be expected to engage in it. But his strength is weakened by, being in an even place, and he is no match for his correlate in line 5, and therefore retreats. A town or city with only three hundred families is said p. 71 to be very small. That the subject of the line should retire to so insignificant a place is further proof of his humility.

Line 3 is weak and in an odd place. Its subject therefore is not equal to strive, but withdraws from the arena. Even if forced into it, he will keep himself in the background;--and be safe. 'He keeps in the old place assigned for his support' is, literally, 'He eats his old virtue;' meaning that he lives in and on the appanage assigned to him for his services.

Line 4 is strong, and not in the centre; so that we are to conceive of its subject as having a mind to strive. But immediately above it is line 5, the symbol of the ruler, and with him it is hopeless to strive; immediately below is 3, weak, and out of its proper place, incapable of maintaining a contention. Its proper correlate is the lowest line, weak, and out of its proper place, from whom little help can come. Hence its subject takes the course indicated, which leads to good fortune.

Line 5 has every circumstance in favour of its subject.

Line 6 is strong and able to contend successfully; but is there to be no end of striving? Persistence in it is sure to end in defeat and disgrace. The contender here might receive a reward from the king for his success; but if he received it thrice in a morning, thrice it would be taken from him again. As to the nature of the reward here given, see on the Lî Kî, X, ii, 32.

P. Regis explains several of the expressions in the Text, both in the Thwan and the Hsiang, from the history of king Wăn and his son king Wû. Possibly his own circumstances may have suggested to Wăn some of the Thwan; and his course in avoiding a direct collision with the tyrant Shâu, and Wû's subsequent exploits may have been in the mind of the duke of Kâu. Some of the sentiments, however, cannot be historically explained. They are general protests against all contention and strife.

THE SZE HEXAGRAM

Sze indicates how, in the case which it supposes, with firmness and correctness, and (a leader of) age

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and experience, there will be good fortune and no error.

Footnotes

72:VII The conduct of military expeditions in a feudal kingdom, and we may say, generally, is denoted by the hexagram Sze. Referring to Appendixes I and II for an explanation of the way in which the combination of lines in it is made out to suggest the idea of an army, and that idea being assumed, it is easy to see how the undivided line in the second place should be interpreted of the general, who is responded to by the divided line in the fifth and royal place. Thus entire trust is reposed in him. He is strong p. 73 and correct, and his enterprises will be successful. He is denominated kang zăn, 'an old, experienced man.'

'The rules,' it is said, 'are twofold;--first, that the war be for a righteous end; and second, that the manner of conducting it, especially at the outset, be right.' But how this and the warning in the conclusion should both follow from the divided line being in the first place, has not been sufficiently explained.

How line 2 comes to be the symbol of the general in command of the army has been shown above on the Thwan. The orders of the king thrice conveyed to him are to be understood of his appointment to the command, and not of any rewards conferred on him as a tribute to his merit. Nor is stress to be laid on the 'thrice.' 'It does not mean that the appointment came to him three times; but that it was to him exclusively, and with the entire confidence of the king.'

The symbolism of line 3 is very perplexing. P. Regis translates it:--'Milites videntur deponere sarcinas in curribus. Male.' Canon McClatchie has:--'Third-six represents soldiers as it were lying dead in their baggage carts, and is unlucky.' To the same effect was my own translation of the paragraph, nearly thirty years ago. But the third line, divided, cannot be forced to have such an indication. The meaning I have now given is more legitimate, taken character by character, and more in harmony with the scope of the hexagram, The subject of line 2 is the one proper leader of the host. But line 3 is divided and weak, and occupies the place of a strong line, as if its subject had perversely jumped over two, and perched himself above it to take the command. This interpretation also suits better in the 5th paragraph.

Line 4 is weak and not central; and therefore 'to retreat' is p. 74 natural for its subject. But its place is even, and proper for a divided line; and the retreat will be right in the circumstances.

In line 5 we seem to have an intimation of the important truth that only defensive war, or war waged by the rightful authority to put down rebellion and lawlessness, is right. 'The birds in the fields' symbolise parties attacking for plunder. The fifth line symbolises the chief authority,--the king, who is weak, or humble, and in the centre, and cedes the use of all his power to the general symbolised by line 2. The subject of 2 is 'the oldest son.' Those of three and four are supposed to be 'the younger brother and son,' that is, the younger men, who would cause evil if admitted to share the command.

The lesson on the topmost line is true and important, but the critics seem unable to deduce it from the nature of the line, as divided and in the sixth place.

THE PÎ HEXAGRAM

Pî indicates that (under the conditions which it supposes) there is good fortune. But let (the principal party intended in it) re-examine himself, (as if)

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by divination, whether his virtue be great, unintermitting, and firm. If it be so, there will be no error. Those who have not rest will then come to him; and with those who are (too) late in coming it will be ill.

In the third SIX, divided, we see its subject seeking for union with such as ought not to be associated with.

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seeking for union with the one beyond himself. With firm correctness there will be good fortune.

Footnotes

75:VIII The idea of union between the different members and classes of a state, and how it can be secured, is the subject of the hexagram Pî. The whole line occupying the fifth place, or that of authority, in the hexagram, represents the ruler to whom the subjects of all the other lines offer a ready submission. According to the general rules for the symbolism of the lines, the second line is the correlate of the fifth; but all the other lines are here made subject to that fifth;--which is also a law of the Yî, according to the 'Daily Lecture.' To me it has the suspicious look of being made for the occasion. The harmony of union, therefore, is to be secured by the sovereign authority of one; but he is warned to see to it that his virtue be what will beseem his place, and subjects are warned not to delay to submit to him.

Where does the 'sincerity' predicated of the subject of line 1 come from? The 'earthenware vessel' is supposed to indicate its plain, unadorned character; but there is nothing in the position and nature of the line, beyond the general idea in the figure, to Suggest the attribute.

Line 2 is the proper correlate of 5. Its position in the centre of the inner or lower trigram agrees with the movement of its subject as proceeding from the inward mind.

Line 3 is weak, not in the centre, nor in its correct place. The lines above and below it are both weak. All these things are supposed to account for what is said on it.

'The one beyond himself' in line 4 is the ruler or king, who is p. 76 the subject of 5, and with whom union ought to be sought. The divided line, moreover, is in a place proper to it. If its subject be firm and correct, there will be good fortune.

The subject of line 5 is the king, who must be the centre of union. The ancient kings had their great hunting expeditions in the different seasons; and that of each season had its peculiar rules. But what is stated here was common to all. When the beating was completed, and the shooting was ready to commence, one side of the enclosure into which the game had been driven was left open and unguarded;--a proof of the royal benevolence, which did not want to make an end of all the game. So well known and understood is this benevolence of the model king of the hexagram, that all his people try to give it effect. Thus the union contemplated is shown to be characterised by mutual confidence and appreciation in virtue and benevolence.

A weak line being in the 6th place, which is appropriate to it, its subject is supposed to be trying to promote union among and with the subjects of the lines below. It is too late. The time is past. Hence it is symbolised as 'without a head,' that is, as not having taken the first step, from which its action should begin, and go on to the end.

THE HSIÂO KHÛ HEXAGRAM

Hsiâo Khû indicates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and success. (We see) dense clouds, but no rain coming from our borders in the west.

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Footnotes

77:IX The name Hsiâo Khû is interpreted as meaning 'small restraint.' The idea of 'restraint' having once been determined on as that to be conveyed by the figure, it is easily made out that the restraint must be small, for its representative is the divided line in the fourth place; and the check given by that to all the undivided lines cannot be great. Even if we suppose, as many critics do, that all the virtue of that upper trigram Sun is concentrated in its first line, the attribute ascribed to Sun is that of docile flexibility, which cannot long be successful against the strength emblemed by the lower trigram Khien. The restraint therefore is small, and in the end there will be 'progress and success.'

The second sentence of the Thwan contains indications of the place, time, and personality of the writer which it seems possible to ascertain. The fief of Kâu was the western portion of the p. 78 kingdom of Yin or Shang, the China of the twelfth century B. C., the era of king Wăn. Rain coming and moistening the ground is the cause of the beauty and luxuriance of the vegetable world, and the emblem of the blessings flowing from good training and good government. Here therefore in the west, the hereditary territory of the house of Kâu, are blessings which might enrich the whole kingdom; but they are somehow restrained. The dense clouds do not empty their stores.

P. Regis says:--'To declare openly that no rain fell from the heavens long covered with dense clouds over the great tract of country, which stretched from the western border to the court and on to the eastern sea, was nothing else but leaving it to all thoughtful minds to draw the conclusion that the family of Wan was as worthy of the supreme seat as that of Shâu, the tyrant, however ancient, was unworthy of it (vol. i, p. 356).' The intimation is not put in the Text, however, so clearly as by P. Regis.

Line 1 is undivided, the first line of Khien, occupying its proper place. Its subject, therefore, notwithstanding the check of line 4, resumes his movement, and will act according to his strong nature, and go forward.

Line 2 is also strong, and though an even place is not appropriate to it, that place being central, its subject will make common cause with the subject of line 1; and there will be good fortune.

Line 3, though strong, and in a proper place, yet not being in the centre, is supposed to be less able to resist the restraint of line 4; and hence it has the ill omens that are given.

The subject of line 4, one weak line against all the strong lines of the hexagram, might well expect wounds, and feel apprehension in trying to restrain the others; but it is in its proper place; it is the first line also of Sun, whose attribute is docile flexibility. p. 79 The strong lines are moved to sympathy and help, and 'there is no mistake.'

Line 5 occupies the central place of Sun, and converts, by the sincerity, of its subject, 4 and 6 into its neighbours, who suffer themselves to be used by it, and effect their common object.

In line 6, the idea of the hexagram has run its course. The harmony of nature is restored. The rain falls, and the onward march of the strong lines should now stop. But weakness that has achieved such a result, if it plume itself on it, will be in a position of peril; and like the full moon, which must henceforth wane. Let the superior man, when he has attained his end, remain in quiet.

THE LÎ HEXAGRAM

(Lî suggests the idea of) one treading on the tail of a tiger, which does not bite him. There will be progress and success.

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p. 80

presage which that gives. If it be complete and without failure, there will be great good fortune.

Footnotes

80:X The character giving its name to the hexagram plays an important part also in the symbolism; and this may be the reason why it does not, as the name, occupy the first place in the Thwan. Looking at the figure, we see it is made up of the trigrams Tui, representing a marsh, and Khien, representing the sky. Tui is a yin trigram, and its top line is divided. Below Khien, the great symbol of strength, it may readily suggest the idea of treading on a tiger's tail, which was an old way of expressing what was hazardous (Shû V, XXV, 2). But what suggests the statement that 'the tiger does not bite the treader?' The attribute of Tui is pleased satisfaction. of course such an attribute could not be predicated of one who was in the fangs of a tiger. The coming scatheless out of such danger further suggests the idea of 'progress and success' in the course which king Wăn had in his mind. And according to Appendix VI, that course was 'propriety,' the observance of all the rules of courtesy. On these, as so many stepping-stones, one may tread safely amid scenes of disorder and peril.

Line 1 is an undivided line in an odd place; giving us the ideas of activity, firmness, and correctness. One so characterised will act rightly.

Line 2 occupies the middle place of the trigram, which is supposed to symbolise a path cut straight and level along the hill-side, or over difficult ground. Line, is not a proper correlate, and hence the idea of the subject of 2 being 'a quiet and solitary man.'

Line 3 is neither central nor in an even place, which would be proper to it. But with the strength of will which the occupant of an odd place should possess, he goes forward with the evil results so variously emblemed. The editors of the imperial edition, in illustration of the closing sentence, refer to Analects VII, x.

Line 4 is in contiguity with 5, whose subject is in the place of authority; but he occupies the place proper to a weak or divided line, and hence he bethinks himself, and goes softly.

Beneath the symbolism under line 5, lies the principle that the most excellent thing in 'propriety' is humility. And the subject of the line, which is strong and central, will not be lacking in this, but bear in mind that the higher he is exalted, the greater may be his fall.

What is said on line 6 is good, but is only a truism. The whole course has been shown; if every step has been right and appropriate, the issue will be very good.

THE THÂI HEXAGRAM

In Thâi (we see) the little gone and the great come. (It indicates that) there will be good fortune, with progress and success.

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resources, but calling in his neighbours. (They all come) not as having received warning, but in the sincerity (of their hearts).

Footnotes

82:XI The language of the Thwan has reference to the form of Thâi, with the three strong lines of Khien below, and the three weak lines of Khwăn above. The former are 'the great,' active and vigorous; the latter are 'the small,' inactive and submissive. But where have the former 'come' from, and whither are the latter gone?' In many editions of the Yî beneath the hexagram of Thâi here, there appears that of Kwei Mei, the 54th in order ( ), which becomes Thâi, if the third and fourth lines exchange places. But in the notes on the Thwan, in the first Appendix, on hexagram 6, I have spoken of the doctrine of 'changing figures,' and intimated my disbelief of it. The different hexagrams arose necessarily by the continued manipulation of the undivided and divided lines, and placing them each over itself and over the other. When king Wăn wrote these Thwan, he was taking the 64 hexagrams, as they were ready to his hand, and not forming one from another by any process of divination. The 'gone' and 'come' are merely equivalent to 'below' and 'above,' in the lower trigram or in the upper.

A course in which the motive forces are represented by the three strong, and the opposing by the three weak lines, must be progressive and successful. Thâi is called the hexagram of the first month of the year, the first month of the natural spring, when for six months, through the fostering sun and genial skies, the processes of growth will be going on.

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The symbolism of paragraph 1 is suggested by the three strong lines of Khien all together, and all possessed by the same instinct to advance. The movement of the first will be supported by that of the others, and be fortunate.

The second line is strong, but in an even place. This is supposed to temper the strength of its subject; which is expressed by the first of his characteristics. But the even place is the central; and it is responded to by a proper correlate in the fifth line above. Hence come all the symbolism of the paragraph and the auspice of good fortune implied in it.

Beneath the symbolism in paragraph 3 there lies the persuasion of the constant change that is taking place in nature and in human affairs. As night succeeds to day, and winter to summer, so calamity may be expected to follow prosperity, and decay the flourishing of a state. The third is the last of the lines of Khien, by whose strength and activity the happy state of Thâi has been produced. Another aspect of things may be looked for; but by firmness and correctness the good estate of the present may be long continued.

According to the treatise on the Thwan, the subjects of the fourth and other upper lines are not 'the small returning' as opponents of the strong lines below, as is generally supposed; but as the correlates of those lines, of one heart and mind with them to maintain the state of Thâi, and giving them, humbly but readily, all the help in their power.

Tî-yî, the last sovereign but one of the Yin dynasty, reigned from B. C. 1191 to 1155; but what was the history of him and his sister here referred to we do not know. P. Regis assumes that he gave his sister in marriage to the lord of Kâu, known in subsequent p. 84 time as king Wăn, and that she was the famous Thaî-sze;--contrary to all the evidence I have been able to find on the subject. According to Khăng-žze, Tî-yî was the first to enact a law that daughters of the royal house, in marrying princes of the states, should be in subjection to them, as if they were not superior to them in rank. Here line 5, while occupying the place of dignity and authority in the hexagram, is yet a weak line in the place of a strong and its subject, accordingly, humbly condescends to his one, strong and proper correlate in line 2.

The course denoted by Thâi has been run; and will be followed by one of a different and unhappy character. The earth dug from the moat had been built up to form a protecting wall; but it is now again fallen into the ditch. War will only aggravate the evil; and however the ruler may address good proclamations to himself and the people of his capital, the coming evil cannot be altogether averted.

THE PHÎ HEXAGRAM

In Phî there is the want of good understanding between the (different classes of) men, and its indication is unfavourable to the firm and correct

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course of the superior man. We see in it the great gone and the little come.

The third SIX, divided, shows its subject ashamed of the purpose folded (in his breast).

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brings the distress and obstruction to a close,--the great man and fortunate. (But let him say), 'We may perish! We may perish!' (so shall the state of things become firm, as if) bound to a clump of bushy mulberry trees.

Footnotes

85:XII The form of Phî, it will be seen, is exactly the opposite of that of Thâi. Much of what has been said on the interpretation of that will apply to this, or at least assist the student in making out the meaning of its symbolism. Phî is the hexagram of the seventh month. Genial influences have done their work, the processes of growth are at an end. Henceforth increasing decay must be looked for.

Naturally we should expect the advance of the subject of the first of the three weak lines to lead to evil; but if he set himself to be firm and correct, he will bring about a different issue.

Patience and obedience are proper for the small man in all circumstances. If the great man in difficulty yet cherish these attributes, he will soon have a happy issue out of the distress.

The third line is weak. Its place is odd, and therefore for it incorrect. Its subject would vent his evil purpose, but has not strength to do so. He is left therefore to the shame which he ought to feel without a word of warning. Does the ming of the fourth line mean 'the ordination of Heaven,' as Kû Hsî thinks; or the orders of the ruler, as Khăng-žze says? Whichever interpretation be taken (and some critics unite the two), the action of the subject of the line, whose strength is tempered by the even position, will be good and correct, and issue in success and happiness.

The strong line in the fifth, (its correct), place, brings the distress and obstruction to a close. Yet its subject--the ruler in the hexagram-is warned to continue to be cautious in two lines of rhyme:--

'And let him say, "I die! I die I" So to a bushy clump his fortune he shall tie.'

There is an end of the condition of distress. It was necessary, that condition should give place to its opposite; and the strong line in the topmost place fitly represents the consequent joy.

THE THUNG ZĂN HEXAGRAM

Thung Zăn (or 'Union of men') appears here (as we find it) in the (remote districts of the) country, indicating progress and success. It will be advantageous to cross the great stream. It will be advantageous to maintain the firm correctness of the superior man.

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of) the union of men in the suburbs. There will be no occasion for repentance.

Footnotes

87:XIII Thung Zăn describes a condition of nature and of the state opposite to that of Phî. There was distress and obstruction; here is union. But the union must be based entirely on public considerations, without taint of selfishness.

The strong line in the fifth, its correct, place, occupies the most important position, and has for its correlate the weak second line, also in its correct place. The one divided line is naturally sought after by all the strong lines. The upper trigram is that of heaven, which is above; the lower is that of fire, whose tendency is to mount upwards. All these things are in harmony with the idea of union. But the union must be free from all selfish motives, and this is indicated by its being in the remote districts of the country, where people are unsophisticated, and free from the depraving effects incident to large societies. A union from such motives will cope with the greatest difficulties; and yet a word of caution is added.

Line 1 emblems the first attempts at union. It is strong, but in the lowest place; and it has no proper correlate above. There is, however, no intermixture of selfishness in it.

Lines 2 and 5 are proper correlates, which fact suggests in this hexagram the idea of their union being limited and partial, and such as may afford ground for blame.

Line 3 is strong, and in an odd place; but it has not a proper correlate in 6. This makes its subject more anxious to unite with 2; but 2 is devoted to its proper correlate in 5, of whose strength 3 is afraid, and takes the measures described. His abstaining so long, however, from any active attempt, will save him from misfortune.

Line 4 is strong, but in an even place, which weakens its subject, He also would fain make an attempt on 2; but he is afraid, and does not carry his purpose into effect.

Line 5 is strong, in an odd, and the central place; and would fain unite with 2, which indeed is the proper correlate of its subject. But 3 and 4 are powerful foes that oppose the union, Their opposition makes him weep; but he collects his forces, defeats them, and effects his purpose.

The union reaches to all within the suburbs, and is riot yet universal; but still there is no cause for repentance.

THE TÂ YÛ HEXAGRAM

Tâ Yû indicates that, (under the circumstances which it implies), there will be great progress and success.

Footnotes

88:XIV Tâ Yû means 'Great Havings;' denoting in a kingdom a state of prosperity and abundance, and in a, family or individual, a p. 89 state of opulence. The danger threatening such a condition arises from the pride which it is likely to engender. But everything here is against that issue. Apart from the symbolism of the trigrams, we have the place of honour occupied by a weak line, so that its subject will be humble; and all the other lines, strong as they are, will act in obedient sympathy. There will be great progress and success.

Line 2, though strong, is at the lowest part of the figure, and has no correlate above. No external influences have as yet acted injuriously on its subject. Let him do as directed, and no hurtful influence will ever affect him.

The strong line 2 has its proper correlate in line 5, the ruler of the figure, and will use its strength in subordination to his humility. Hence the symbolism.

Line 3 is strong, and in the right (an odd) place. The topmost line of the lower trigram is the proper place for a feudal lord. The subject of this will humbly serve the condescending ruler in line 5. A small man, having the place without the virtue, would give himself airs.

Line 4 is strong, but the strength is tempered by the position, which is that of a weak line. Hence he will do no injury to the mild ruler, to whom he is so near.

Line 5 symbolises the ruler. Mild sincerity is good in him, and affects his ministers and others. But a ruler must not be without an awe-inspiring majesty.

Even the topmost line takes its character from 5. The strength of its subject is still tempered, and Heaven gives its approval.

THE KHIEN HEXAGRAM

Khien indicates progress and success. The superior man, (being humble as it implies), will have a (good) issue (to his undertakings).

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stream may be crossed with this, and there will be good fortune.

Footnotes

90:XV An essay on humility rightly follows that on abundant possessions. The third line, which is a whole line amid five others divided, occupying the topmost place in the lower trigram, is held by the Khang-hsî editors and many others to be 'the lord of the hexagram,' the representative of humility, strong, but abasing itself. There is nothing here in the text to make us enter farther on the symbolism of the figure. Humility is the way to permanent success.

A weak line, at the lowest place of the figure, is the fitting symbol of the superior man adding humility to humility.

Line 2 is weak, central, and in its proper place, representing a humility that has 'crowed;' that is, has proclaimed itself.

Line 3 is strong, and occupies an odd (its proper) place. It is 'the lord of the hexagram,' to whom all represented by the lines above and below turn.

Line 4 is weak and in its proper position. Its subject is sure to p. 91 be successful and prosperous, but being so near the fifth line, he should still use the greatest precaution.

All men love and honour humility, in itself and without the adjuncts which usually command obedience and respect. Hence his neighbours follow the ruler in the fifth line, though he may not be very rich or powerful. His humility need not keep him from asserting the right, even by force of arms.

The subject of the sixth line, which is weak, is outside the game, so to speak, that has been played out. He will use force, but only within his own sphere and to assert what is right. He will not be aggressive.

THE YÜ HEXAGRAM

Yü indicates that, (in the state which it implies), feudal princes may be set up, and the hosts put in motion, with advantage.

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is the success which he obtains. Let him not allow suspicions to enter his mind, and thus friends will gather around him.

Footnotes

92:XVI The Yü hexagram denoted to king Win a condition of harmony and happy contentment throughout the kingdom, when the people rejoiced in and readily obeyed their sovereign. At such a time his appointments and any military undertakings would be hailed and supported. The fourth line, undivided, is the lord of the figure, and being close to the fifth or place of dignity, is to be looked on as the minister or chief officer of the ruler. The ruler gives to him his confidence; and all represented by the other lines yield their obedience.

Line 1 is weak, and has for its correlate the strong 4. Its subject may well enjoy the happiness of the time. But he cannot contain himself, and proclaims, or boasts of, his satisfaction;--which is evil.

Line 2, though weak, is in its correct position, the centre, moreover, of the lower trigram. Quietly and firmly its subject is able to abide in his place, and exercise a far-seeing discrimination. All is indicative of good fortune.

Line 3 is weak, and in an odd place. Immediately below line 4, its subject keeps looking up to the lord of the figure, and depends on him, thinking of doing nothing, but how to enjoy himself. The consequence will be as described, unless he speedily change.

The strong subject of line 4 is the agent to whom the happy condition is owing; and it is only necessary to caution him to maintain his confidence in himself and his purpose, and his adherents and success will continue.

Line 5 is in the ruler's place; but it is weak, and he is in danger of being carried away by the lust of pleasure. Moreover, proximity to the powerful minister represented by 4 is a source of danger. p. 93 Hence he is represented as suffering from a chronic complaint, but nevertheless he does not die. See Appendix II on the line.

Line 6, at the very top or end of the hexagram, is weak, and its subject is all but lost. Still even for him there is a chance of safety, if he will but change.

THE SUI HEXAGRAM

Sui indicates that (under its conditions) there will be great progress and success. But it will be advantageous to be firm and correct. There will (then) be no error.

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Footnotes

94:XVII Sui symbolises the idea of following. It is said to follow Yü, the symbol of harmony and satisfaction. Where there are these conditions men are sure to follow; nor will they follow those in whom they have no complacency. The hexagram includes the cases where one follows others, and where others follow him; and the auspice of great progress and success is due to this flexibility and applicability of it. But in both cases the following must be guided by a reference to what is proper and correct. See the notes on the Thwan and the Great Symbolism.

Line 1 is strong, and lord of the lower trigram. The weak lines ought to follow it; but here it is below them, in the lowest place of the figure. This gives rise to the representation of one changing his pursuit. Still through the native vigour indicated by the line being strong, and in its correct place, its subject will be fortunate. Going beyond his gate to find associates indicates his public spirit, and superiority to selfish considerations.

Line 2 is weak. Its proper correlate is the strong 5; but it prefers to cleave to the line below, instead of waiting to follow 5. Hence the symbolism of the text, the bad omen of which needs not to be mentioned.

Line 3 is also weak, but it follows the strong line above it and leaves line 1, reversing the course of 2;--with a different issue. It is weak, however, and 4 is not its proper correlate; hence the conclusion of the paragraph is equivalent to a caution.

Line 4 is strong, and in the place of a great minister next the ruler in 5. But his having adherents may be injurious to the supreme and sole authority of that ruler, and only a sincere loyalty will save him from. error and misfortune.

Line 5 is strong, and in its correct place, with 2 as its proper correlate; thus producing the auspicious symbolism.

The issue of the hexagram is seen in line 6; which represents the ideal of following, directed by the most sincere adherence to p. 95 what is right. This influence not only extends to men, but also to spiritual beings. 'The western hill' is mount Khî, at the foot of which was the original settlement of the house of Kâu, in B. C. 1325. The use of the name 'king' here brings us down from Wăn into the time of king Wû at least.

THE KÛ HEXAGRAM

Kû indicates great progress and success (to him who deals properly with the condition represented by it). There will be advantage in (efforts like that of) crossing the great stream. (He should weigh well, however, the events of) three days before the turning point, and those (to be done) three days after it.

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indulgently the troubles caused by his father. If he go forward, he will find cause to regret it.

Footnotes

96:XVIII In the 6th Appendix it is said, They who follow another are sure to have services (to perform), and hence Sui is followed by Kû.' But Kû means the having painful or troublesome services to do. It denotes here a state in which things are going to ruin, as if through poison or venomous worms; and the figure is supposed to describe the arrest of the decay and the restoration to soundness and vigour, so as to justify its auspice of great progress and success. To realise such a result, however, great efforts will be required, as in crossing the great stream; and a careful consideration of the events that have brought on the state of decay, and the measures to be taken to remedy it is also necessary. See Appendix I on the 'three days.'

The subject of line 1, and of all the other lines, excepting perhaps 6, appears as a son. Yet the line itself is of the yin nature, and the trigram in which it plays the principal part is also yin. Line 2 is strong, and of the yang nature, with the yin line 5 as its proper correlate. In line 2, 5 appears as the mother; but its subject there is again a son, and the upper trigram altogether is yang. I am unable to account for these things. As is said in the note of Regis on line 2:--'Haec matris filiique denominatio ad has lineas mere translatitia est, et, ut ait commentarius vulgaris, ad explicationem sententiarum eas pro matre et filio supponere dicendum est. Nec ratio reddetur si quis in utroque hoc nomine mysterium quaerat. Cur enim aliis in figuris lineae nunc regem, nunc vasallum, jam imperii administrum, mox summum armorum praefectum referre dicantur? Accommodantur scilicet lineae ad verba sententiae et verba sententiae ad sensum, queniadmodum faciendum de methodis libri Shih King docet Mencius, V, i, ode 4.2.'

We must leave this difficulty. Line 1 is weak, and its correlate 4 is also weak. What can its subject do to remedy the state of decay? But the line is the first of the figure, and the decay is not p. 97 yet great. By giving heed to the cautions in the Text, he will accomplish what is promised.

The ruler in line 5 is represented by a weak line, while 2 is strong. Thus the symbolism takes the form of a son dealing with the prevailing decay induced somehow by his mother. But a son must be very gentle in all his intercourse with his mother, and especially so, when constrained by a sense of duty to oppose her course. I do not think there is anything more or better to be said here. The historical interpretation adopted by Regis and his friends, that the father here is king Wăn, the mother Thâi-sze, and the son king Wû, cannot be maintained. I have searched, but in vain, for the slightest Chinese sanction of it, and it would give to Kû the meaning of misfortunes endured, instead of troubles caused.

Line 3 is strong, and not central, so that its subject might well go to excess in his efforts. But this tendency is counteracted by the line's place in the trigram Sun, often denoting lowly submission.

Line 4 is weak, and in an even place, which intensifies that weakness. Hence comes the caution against going forward.

The weak line 5, as has been said, is the seat of the ruler; but its proper correlate is the strong 2, the strong siding champion minister, to whom the work of the hexagram is delegated.

Line 6 is strong, and has no proper correlate below. Hence it suggests the idea of one outside the sphere of action, and taking no part in public affairs, but occupied with the culture of himself.

THE LIN HEXAGRAM

Lin (indicates that under the conditions supposed in it) there will be great progress and success, while it will be advantageous to be firmly correct. In the eighth month there will be evil.

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second line). Through his firm correctness there will be good fortune.

Footnotes

98:XIX In Appendix VI Lin is explained as meaning 'great.' The writer, having misunderstood the meaning of the previous Kû, subjoins--'He who performs such services may become "great."' But Lin denotes the approach of authority,--to inspect, to comfort, or to rule. When we look at the figure, we see two strong undivided lines advancing on the four weak lines above them, and thence follows the assurance that their action will be powerful and successful. That action must be governed by rectitude, however, and by caution grounded on the changing character of all conditions and events. The meaning of the concluding sentence is given in Appendix I as simply being--that, 'the advancing power will decay in no long time.' Lû Kăn-khî (Ming dynasty) says:--'The sun (or the day) is the symbol of what is Yang; and the moon is the symbol of what is Yin. Eight is the number of the second of the four emblematic figures (the smaller Yin), and seven is the number of the third of them (the smaller Yang). Hence to indicate the period of the coming of what is Yin, we use the phrase, "the eighth month;" and to indicate the period of the coming of what is p. 99 Yang, we use the phrase, "the seventh day."' The Khang-hsî editors say that this is the best explanation of the language of the Text that can be given:--'The Yang numbers culminate in 9, the influence then receding and producing the 8 of the smaller Yin. The Yin numbers culminate in 6, and the next advance produces the 7 of the smaller Yang; so that 7 and 8 are the numbers indicating the first birth of what is Yin and what is Yang.' 'If we go to seek,' they add, 'any other explanation of the phraseology of the Text, and such expressions as "3 days," "3 years," "10 years," &c., we make them unintelligible.' Lin is the hexagram of the twelfth month.

Line 1 is a strong line in its proper place. The danger is that its subject may be more strong than prudent, hence the caution in requiring firm correctness.

Line 2, as strong, should be in an odd place; but this is more than counterbalanced by the central position, and its correlate in line 5.

Line 3 is weak, and neither central, nor in its correct position. Hence its action will not be advantageous; but being at the top of the trigram Tui, which means being pleased, its subject is represented as 'well pleased to advance.' Anxious reflection will save him from error.

Line 4, though weak, is in its proper place, and has for its correlate the strong 1. Hence its advance is 'in the highest style.'

Line 5 is the position of the ruler. It is weak, but being central, and having for its correlate the strong and central 2, we have in it a symbol of authority distrustful of itself, and employing fit agents;--characteristic of the wise ruler.

Line 6 is the last of the trigram Khwăn, the height therefore of docility. Line 2 is not its correlate, but it belongs to the Yin to seek for the Yang; and it is so emphatically in this case. Hence the characteristic and issue as assigned.

THE KWÂN HEXAGRAM

Kwân shows (how he whom it represents should be like) the worshipper who has washed his hands, but not (yet) presented his offerings;--with sincerity

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and an appearance of dignity (commanding reverent regard).

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Footnotes

100:XX The Chinese character Kwân, from which this hexagram is named, is used in it in two senses. In the Thwan, the first paragraph of the treatise on the Thwan, and the paragraph on the Great Symbolism, it denotes showing, manifesting; in all other places it denotes contemplating, looking at. The subject of the hexagram is the sovereign and his subjects, how he manifests himself to them, and how they contemplate him. The two upper, undivided, lines belong to the sovereign; the four weak lines below them are his subjects,--ministers and others who look up at him. Kwân is the hexagram of the eighth month.

In the Thwan king Wăn symbolises the sovereign by a worshipper when he is most solemn in his religious service, at the commencement of it, full of sincerity and with a dignified carriage.

Line 1 is weak, and in the lowest place, improper also for it;--p. 101the symbol of a thoughtless lad, who cannot see far, and takes only superficial views.

Line 2 is also weak, but in its proper place, showing a woman, living retired, and only able to peep as from her door at the subject of the fifth line. But ignorance and retirement are proper in a woman.

Line 3, at the top of the lower trigram Khwăn, and weak, must belong to a subject of the utmost docility, and will wish to act only according to the exigency of time and circumstances.

Line 4, in the place proper to its weakness, is yet in immediate proximity to 5, representing the sovereign. Its subject is moved accordingly, and stirred to ambition.

Line 5 is strong, and in the place of the ruler. He is a superior man, but this does not relieve him from the duty of self-contemplation or examination.

There is a slight difference in the 6th paragraph from the 5th, which can hardly be expressed in a translation. By making a change in the punctuation, however, the different significance may be brought out. Line 6 is strong, and should be considered out of the work of the hexagram, but its subject is still possessed by the spirit of its idea, and is led to self-examination.

THE SHIH HO HEXAGRAM

Shih Ho indicates successful progress (in the condition of things which it supposes). It will be advantageous to use legal constraints.

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Footnotes

102:XXI Shih Ho means literally 'Union by gnawing.' We see in the figure two strong lines in the first and last places, while all the others, with the exception of the fourth, are divided. This suggests the idea of the jaws and the mouth between them kept open by something in it. Let that be gnawed through and the mouth will close and the jaws come together. So in the body politic. Remove the obstacles to union, and high and low will come together with a good understanding. And how are those obstacles to be removed? By force, emblemed by the gnawing; that is, by legal constraints. And these are sure to be successful. The auspice of the figure is favourable. There will be success.

Lines 1 and 6 are much out of the game or action described in the figure. Hence they are held to represent parties receiving punishment, while the other lines represent parties inflicting it. The punishment in line 1 is that of the stocks, administered for a small offence, and before crime has made much way. But if the 'depriving' of the toes is not merely keeping them in restraint, but cutting them off, as the Chinese character suggests, the punishment appears to a western reader too severe.

Line 2 is weak, appropriately therefore in an even place, and it is central besides. The action therefore of its subject should p. 103 be effective; and this is shown by the 'biting through the soft flesh,' an easy thing. Immediately below, however, is a strong offender represented by the strong line, and before he will submit it is necessary to 'bite off his nose;' for punishment is the rule it must be continued and increased till the end is secured.

Line 3 is weak, and in an even place. The action of its subject will be ineffective; and is emblemed by the hard task of gnawing through dried flesh, and encountering, besides, what is distasteful and injurious in it. But again comes in the consideration that here punishment is the rule, and the auspice is not all bad.

Of old, in a civil case, both parties, before they were heard, brought to the court an arrow (or a bundle of arrows), in testimony of their rectitude, after which they were heard; in a criminal case, they in the same way deposited each thirty pounds of gold, or some other metal. See the Official Book of Kau, 27. 14, 15. The subject of the fourth line's getting those pledges indicates his exercising his judicial functions; and what he gnaws through indicates their difficulty. Moreover, though the line is strong, it is in an even place; and hence comes the lesson of caution.

The fifth line represents 'the lord of judgment.' As it is a weak line, he will be disposed to leniency; and his judgments will be correct. This is declared by his finding the 'yellow metal;' for yellow is one of the five 'correct' colours. The position is in the centre and that of rule; but the line being weak, a caution is given, as under the previous line.

The action of the figure has passed, and still we have, in the subject of line 6, one persisting in wrong, a strong criminal, wearing the cangue, and deaf to counsel. of course the auspice is evil.

THE PÎ HEXAGRAM

Pî indicates that there should be free course (in what it denotes). There will be little advantage (however) if it be allowed to advance (and take the lead).

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Footnotes

104:XXII The character Pî is the symbol of what is ornamental and of the act of adorning. As there is ornament in nature, so should there be in society; but its place is secondary to that of what is substantial. This is the view of king Wăn in his Thwan. The symbolism of the separate lines is sometimes fantastic.

Line 1 is strong, and in an odd place. It is at the very bottom of the hexagram, and is the first line of Lî, the trigram. for fire or light, and suggesting what is elegant and bright. Its subject has nothing to do but to attend to himself. Thus he cultivates--adorns--himself in his humble position; but if need be, righteousness requiring it, he can give up every luxury and indulgence.

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Line 2 is weak and in its proper place, but with no proper correlate above. The strong line 3 is similarly situated. These two lines therefore keep together, and are as the beard and the chin. Line 1 follows 2. What is substantial commands and rules what is merely ornamental.

Line 3 is strong, and between two weak lines, which adorn it, and bestow their favours on it. But this happy condition is from the accident of place. The subject of the line must be always correct and firm to ensure its continuance.

Line 4 has its proper correlate in 1, from whose strength it should receive ornament, but 2 and the strong 3 intervene and keep them apart, so that the ornament is only white, and of no bright colour. Line 4, however, is faithful to 1, and earnest for their union. And finally line 3 appears in a good character, and not with the purpose to injure, so that the union of 1 and 4 takes place. All this is intended to indicate how ornament recognises the superiority of solidity. Compare the symbolism of the second line of Kun (3), and that of the topmost line of Khwei (38).

Line .5 is in the place of honour, and has no proper correlate in 2. It therefore associates with the strong 6, which is symbolised by the heights and gardens round a city, and serving both to protect and to beautify it. Thus the subject of the line receives adorning from without, and does not of itself try to manifest it. Moreover, in his weakness, his offerings of ceremony are poor and mean. But, as Confucius said, 'In ceremonies it is better to be sparing than extravagant.' Hence that stinginess does not prevent a good auspice.

Line 6 is at the top of the hexagram. Ornament has had its course, and here there is a return to pure, 'white,' simplicity. Substantiality is better than ornament.

THE PO HEXAGRAM

Po indicates that (in the state which it symbolises) it will not be advantageous to make a movement in any direction whatever.

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Footnotes

106:XXIII Po is the symbol of falling or of causing to fall, and may be applied, both in the natural and political world, to the process of decay, or that of overthrow. The figure consists of five divided lines, and one undivided, which last thus becomes the prominent and principal line in the figure. Decay or overthrow has begun at the bottom of it, and crept up to the top. The hexagram is that of the ninth month, when the beauty and glory of summer have disappeared, and the year is ready to fall into the arms of sterile winter. In the political world, small men have gradually displaced good men and great, till but one remains; and the lesson for him is to wait. The power operating against him is p. 107 too strong; but the fashion of political life passes away. If he wait, a change for the better will shortly appear.

The lesser symbolism is chiefly that of a bed or couch with its occupant. The idea of the hexagram requires this occupant to be overthrown, or at least that an attempt be made to overthrow him. Accordingly the attempt in line 1 is made by commencing with the legs of the couch. The symbolism goes on to explain itself. The object of the evil worker is the overthrow of all firm correctness. of course there will be evil.

Line 2 is to the same effect as 1; only the foe has advanced from the legs to the frame of the couch.

Line 3 also represents an overthrower; but it differs from the others in being the correlate of 6. The subject of it will take part with him. His association is with the subject of 6, and not, as in the other weak lines, with one of its own kind.

From line 4 the danger is imminent. The couch has been overthrown. The person of the occupant is at the mercy of the destroyers.

With line 5 the symbolism changes. The subject of 5 is 'lord of all the other weak lines,' and their subjects are at his disposal. He and they are represented as fishes, following one another as if strung together. All fishes come under the category of yin. Then the symbolism changes again. The subject of 5, representing and controlling all the yin lines, is loyal to the subject of the yang sixth line. He is the rightful sovereign in his palace, and 5 leads all the others there to enjoy the sovereign's favours.

We have still different symbolism under line 6. Its strong subject, notwithstanding the attempts against him, survives, and acquires fresh vigour. The people again cherish their sovereign, and the plotters have wrought to their own overthrow.

THE FÛ HEXAGRAM

Fû indicates that there will be free course and progress (in what it denotes). (The subject of it) finds no one to distress him in his exits and

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entrances; friends come to him, and no error is committed . He will return and repeat his (proper) course. In seven days comes his return. There will be advantage in whatever direction movement is made.

Footnotes

108:XXIV Fû symbolises the idea of returning, coming back or over again. The last hexagram showed us inferior prevailing over superior men, all that is good in nature and society yielding before what is bad. But change is the law of nature and society. When decay has reached its climax, recovery will begin to take place. In Po we had one strong topmost line, and five weak lines below p. 109 it; here we have one strong line, and five weak lines above it. To illustrate the subject from what we see in nature,--Po is the hexagram of the ninth month, in which the triumph of cold and decay in the year is nearly complete. It is complete in the tenth month, whose hexagram is Khwăn ; then follows our hexagram Fû, belonging to the eleventh month, in which was the winter solstice when the sun turned back in his course, and moved with a constant regular progress towards the summer solstice. In harmony with these changes of nature are the changes in the political and social state of a nation. There is nothing in the Yî to suggest the hope of a perfect society or kingdom that cannot be moved.

The strong bottom line is the first of Kăn, the trigram of movement, and the upper trigram is Khwăn, denoting docility and capacity. The strong returning line will meet with no distressing obstacle, and the weak lines will change before it into strong, and be as friends. The bright quality will be developed brighter and brighter from day to day, and month to month.

The sentence, 'In seven days comes his return,' occasions some perplexity. If the reader will refer to hexagrams 44, 33, 12, 20, 23, and 2, he will see that during the months denoted by those figures, the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, and 10th, the yin lines have gradually been prevailing over the yang, until in Khwăn (2) they have extruded them entirely from the lineal figure. Then comes our Fû, as a seventh figure, in which the yang line begins to reassert itself, and from which it goes on to extrude the yin lines in their turn. Explained therefore of the months of the year, we have to take a day for a month. And something analogous--we cannot say exactly what--must have place in society and the state.

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The concluding auspice or oracle to him who finds this Fû by divination is what we might expect.

The subject of line 1 is of course the undivided line, meaning here, says Khăng-žze, 'the way of the superior man.' There must have been some deviation from that, or 'returning' could not be spoken of.

Line 2 is in its proper place, and central; but it is weak. This is more than compensated for, however, by its adherence to line 1, the fifth line not being a proper correlate. Hence the return of its subject is called excellent or admirable.

Line 3 is weak, and in the uneven place of a strong line. It is the top line, moreover, of the trigram whose attribute is movement. Hence the symbolism; but any evil issue may be prevented by a realisation of danger and by caution.

Line 4 has its proper correlate in i; different from all the other weak lines; and its course is different accordingly.

Line 5 is in the central place of honour, and the middle line of Khwăn, denoting docility. Hence its auspice.

Line 6 is weak; and being at the top of the hexagram, when its action of returning is all concluded, action on the part of its subject will lead to evils such as are mentioned. 'Ten years' seems to be a round number, signifying a long time, as in hexagram 3. 2.

THE WÛ WANG HEXAGRAM

Wû Wang indicates great progress and success, while there will be advantage in being firm and

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correct. If (its subject and his action) be not correct, he will fall into errors, and it will not be advantageous for him to move in any direction.

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the case of an ox that has been tied up. A passer by finds it (and carries it off), while the people in the neighbourhood have the calamity (of being accused and. apprehended).

Footnotes

111:XXV Wang is the symbol of being reckless, and often of being insincere; Wû Wang is descriptive of a state of entire freedom from such a condition; its subject is one who is entirely simple and sincere. The quality is characteristic of the action of Heaven, and of the highest style of humanity. In this hexagram we have an essay on this noble attribute. An absolute rectitude is essential to it. The nearer one comes to the ideal of the quality, the more powerful will be his influence, the greater his success. But let him see to it that he never swerve from being correct.

The first line is strong; at the commencement of the inner trigram denoting movement, the action of its subject will very much characterise all the action set forth, and will itself be fortunate.

Line 2 is weak, central, and in its correct place. The quality may be predicated of it in its highest degree. There is an entire freedom in its subject from selfish or mercenary motive. He is good simply for goodness' sake. And things are so constituted that his action will be successful.

But calamity may also sometimes befal the best, and where there is this freedom from insincerity; and line 3 being weak, and in the place of an even line, lays its subject open to this misfortune. 'The people of the neighbourhood' are of course entirely innocent.

Line 4 is the lowest in the trigram of strength, and 1 is not a p. 112 proper correlate, nor is the fourth the place for a strong line. Hence the paragraph must be understood as a caution.

Line 5 is strong, in the central place of honour, and has its proper correlate in 2. Hence its subject must possess the quality of the hexagram in perfection. And yet he shall he sick or in distress. But he need not be anxious. Without his efforts a way of escape for him will be opened.

Line 6 is at the top of the hexagram, and comes into the field when the action has run its course. He should be still, and not initiate any fresh movement.

THE TÂ KHÛ HEXAGRAM

Under the conditions of Tâ Khû it will be advantageous to be firm and correct. (If its subject do not seek to) enjoy his revenues in his own family (without taking service at court), there will be good fortune. It will be advantageous for him to cross the great stream.

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then there will be advantage in whatever direction he may advance.

Footnotes

113:XXVI Khû has two meanings. It is the symbol of restraint, and of accumulation. What is repressed and restrained accumulates its strength and increases its volume. Both these meanings are found in the treatise on the Thwan; the exposition of the Great Symbolism has for its subject the accumulation of virtue. The different lines are occupied with the repression or restraint of movement. The first three lines receive that repression, the upper three exercise it. The accumulation to which all tends is that of virtue; and hence the name of Tâ Khû, 'the Great Accumulation.'

What the Thwan teaches, is that he who goes about to accumulate his virtue must be firm and correct, and may then, engaging in the public service, enjoy the king's grace, and undertake the most difficult enterprises.

Line 1 is subject to the repression of 4, which will be increased if he try to advance. It is better for him to halt.

Line 2 is liable to the repression of 5, and stops its advance of itself, its subject having the wisdom to do so through its position in the central place. The strap below, when attached to the axle, made the carriage stop; he himself acts that part.

Line 3 is the last of Khien, and responds to the sixth line, the last of Kăn, above. But as they are both strong, the latter does not exert its repressive force. They advance rapidly together; but the position is perilous for 3. By firmness and caution, however, its subject will escape the peril, and the issue will be good.

The young bull in line 4 has not yet got horns. The attaching to their rudiments the piece of wood to prevent him from goring is an instance of extraordinary precaution; and precaution is always good.

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A boar is a powerful and dangerous animal. Let him be castrated, and though his tusks remain, he cares little to use them. Here line 5 represents the ruler in the hexagram, whose work is to repress the advance of evil. A conflict with the subject of the strong second line in its advance would be perilous; but 5, taking early precaution, reduces it to the condition of the castrated pig. Not only is there no evil, but there is good fortune.

The work of repression is over, and the strong subject of line 6 has now the amplest scope to carry out the idea of the hexagram in the accumulation of virtue.

THE I HEXAGRAM

Î indicates that with firm correctness there will be good fortune (in what is denoted by it). We must look at what we are seeking to nourish, and by the exercise of our thoughts seek for the proper aliment.

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Footnotes

115:XXVII Î is the symbol of the upper jaw, and gives name to the hexagram; but the whole figure suggests the appearance of the mouth. There are the two undivided lines at the bottom and top, and the four divided lines between them. The first line is the first in the trigram Kăn, denoting movement; and the sixth is the third in Kăn, denoting what is solid. The former is the lower jaw, part of the mobile chin; and the other the more fixed upper jaw. The open lines are the cavity of the mouth. As the name of the hexagram, Î denotes nourishing,--one's body or mind, one's self or others. The nourishment in both the matter and method will differ according to the object of it; and every one must determine what to employ and do in every case by exercising his own thoughts, only one thing being premised,--that in both respects the nourishing must be correct, and in harmony with what is right. The auspice of the whole hexagram is good.

The first line is strong, and in its proper place; its subject might suffice for the nourishing of himself, like a tortoise, which is supposed to live on air, without more solid nourishment. But he is drawn out of himself by desire for the weak 4, his proper correlate, at whom he looks till his jaw hangs down, or, as we say, his mouth waters. Hence the auspice is bad. The symbolism takes the form of an expostulation addressed, we must suppose, by the fourth line to the first.

The weak 2, insufficient for itself, seeks nourishment first from p. 116 the strong line below, which is not proper, and then from the strong 6, not its proper correlate, and too far removed. In either case the thing is evil.

Line 3 is weak, in an odd place; and as it occupies the last place in the trigram of movement, all that quality culminates in its subject. Hence he considers himself sufficient for himself, without any help from without, and the issue is bad.

With line 4 we pass into the upper trigram. It is next to the ruler's place in 5 moreover, and bent on nourishing and training all below. Its proper correlate is the strong 1; and though weak in himself, its subject looks with intense desire to the subject of that for help; and there is no error.

The subject of line 5 is not equal to the requirements of his position; but with a firm reliance on the strong 6, there will be good fortune. Let him not, however, engage in the most difficult undertakings.

The topmost line is strong, and 5 relies on its subject; but being penetrated with the idea of the hexagram, he feels himself in the position of master or tutor to all under heaven. The task is hard and the responsibility great; but realising these things, he will prove himself equal to them.

THE TÂ KWO HEXAGRAM

Tâ Kwo suggests to us a beam that is weak. There will be advantage in moving (under its conditions) in any direction whatever; there will be success.

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willow producing shoots, or an old husband in possession of his young wife. There will be advantage in every way.

Footnotes

117:XXVIII Very extraordinary times require very extraordinary gifts in the conduct of affairs in them. This is the text on which king Wăn and his son discourse after their fashion in this hexagram. What goes, in their view, to constitute anything extraordinary is its greatness and difficulty. There need not be about it what is not right.

Looking at the figure we see two weak lines at the top and bottom, and four strong lines between them, giving us the idea of a great beam unable to sustain its own weight. But the second and fifth lines are both strong and in the centre; and from this and the attributes of the component trigrams a good auspice is obtained.

Line 1 being weak, and at the bottom of the figure, and of the trigram Sun, which denotes flexibility and humility, its subject is distinguished by his carefulness, as in the matter mentioned; and there is a good auspice.

Line 2 has no proper correlate above. Hence he inclines to the weak 1 below him; and we have the symbolism of the line. An p. 118 old husband with a young wife will yet have children; the action of the subject of 2 will be successful.

Line 3 is strong, and in an odd place. Its subject is confident in his own strength, but his correlate in 6 is weak. Alone, he is unequal to the extraordinary strain on him, and has for his symbol the weak beam.

Line 4 is near 5, the ruler's place. On its subject devolves the duty of meeting the extraordinary exigency of the time; but he is strong; and, the line being in an even place, his strength is tempered. He will be equal to his task. Should he look out for the help of the subject of 1, that would affect him with another element of weakness; and his action would give cause for regret.

Line 5 is strong and central. Its subject should be equal to achieve extraordinary merit. But he has no proper correlate below, and as 2 inclined to 1, so does this to 6. But here the willow only produces flowers, not shoots;--its decay will soon reappear. An old wife will have no children. If the subject of the line is not to be condemned as that of 3, his action does not deserve praise.

The subject of 6 pursues his daring course, with a view to satisfy the extraordinary exigency of the time, and benefit all under the sky. He is unequal to the task, and sinks beneath it; but his motive modifies the judgment on his conduct.

THE KHAN HEXAGRAM

Khan, here repeated, shows the possession of sincerity, through which the mind is. penetrating. Action (in accordance with this) will be of high value.

p. 119

in all the peril of the defile. He will, however, get a little (of the deliverance) that he seeks.

Footnotes

119:XXIX The trigram Khan, which is doubled to form this hexagram, is the lineal symbol of water. Its meaning, as a character, is 'a pit,' 'a perilous cavity, or defile;' and here and elsewhere in the Yî it leads the reader to think of a dangerous defile, with water flowing through it. It becomes symbolic of danger, and what the authors of the Text had in mind was to show how danger should be encountered, its effect on the mind, and how to get out of it.

The trigram exhibits a strong central line, between two divided lines. The central represented to king Wăn the sincere honesty and goodness of the subject of the hexagram, whose mind was sharpened and made penetrating by contact with danger, and who p. 120 acted in a manner worthy of his character. It is implied, though the Thwan does not say it, that he would get out of the danger,

Line 1 is weak, at the bottom of the figure, and has no correlate above, no helper, that is, beyond itself. All these things render the case of its subject hopeless. He will by his efforts only involve himself more deeply in danger.

Line 2 is strong, and in the centre. Its subject is unable, indeed, to escape altogether from the danger, but he does not involve himself more deeply in it like the subject of 1, and obtains some ease.

Line 3 is weak, and occupies the place of a strong line. Its subject is in an evil case.

Line 4 is weak, and will get no help from its correlate in 1. Its subject is not one who can avert the danger threatening himself and others. But his position is close to that of the ruler in 5, whose intimacy he cultivates with an unostentatious sincerity, symbolled by the appointments of the simple feast, and whose intelligence he cautiously enlightens. In consequence, there will be no error.

The subject of line 5 is on the eve of extrication and deliverance. The waters of the defile will ere long have free vent and disappear, and the ground will be levelled and made smooth. The line is strong, in a proper place, and in the place of honour.

The case of the subject of line 6 is hopeless. When danger has reached its highest point, there he is, represented by a weak line, and with no proper correlate below. The 'thicket of thorns' is taken as a metaphor for a prison; but if the expression has a history, I have been unable to find it.

THE LÎ HEXAGRAM

Lî indicates that, (in regard to what it denotes), it will be advantageous to be firm and correct, and that thus there will be free course and success.

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[paragraph continues] Let (its subject) also nourish (a docility like that of) the cow, and there will be good fortune.

p. 122

Footnotes

122:XXX p. 121 Lî is the name of the trigram representing fire and light, and the sun as the source of both of these. Its virtue or attribute is brightness, and by a natural metaphor intelligence. But Lî has also the meaning of inhering in, or adhering to, being attached to. Both these significations occur in connexion with the hexagram, and make it difficult to determine what was the subject of it in the minds of the authors. If we take the whole figure as expressing the subject, we have, as in the treatise on the Thwan, 'a double brightness,' a phrase which is understood to denominate the ruler. If we take the two central lines as indicating the subject, we have weakness, dwelling with strength above and below. In either case there are required from the subject a strict adherence to what is correct, and a docile humility. On the second member of the Thwan Khăng-žze says:--'The nature of the ox is docile, and that of the cow is much more so. The subject of the hexagram adhering closely to p. 122 what is correct, he must be able to act in obedience to it, as docile as a cow, and then there will be good fortune.'

Line 1 is strong, and at the bottom of the trigram for fire, the nature of which is to ascend. Its subject therefore will move upwards, and is in danger of doing so coarsely and vehemently. But the lowest line has hardly entered into the action of the figure, and this consideration operates to make him reverently careful of his movements; and there is no error.

Line 2 is weak, and occupies the centre. Yellow is one of the five correct colours, and here symbolises the correct course to which the subject of the line adheres.

Line 3 is at the top of the lower trigram, whose light may be considered exhausted, and suggests the symbol of the declining sun. The subject of the line should accept the position, and resign himself to the ordinary amusements which are mentioned, but he groans and mourns instead. His strength interferes with the lowly contentment which he should cherish.

The. strength of line 4, and its being in an even place, make its subject appear in this unseemly manner, disastrous to himself.

Line 5 is in the place of honour, and central. But it is weak; as is its correlate. Its position between the strong 4 and 6 fills its subject with anxiety and apprehension, that express themselves as is described. But such demonstrations are a proof of his inward adherence to right and his humility. There will be good fortune.

Line 6, strong and at the top of the figure, has the intelligence denoted by its trigrams in the highest degree, and his own proper vigour. Through these his achievements are great, but his generous consideration is equally conspicuous, and he falls into no error.

THE HSIEN HEXAGRAM

Hsien indicates that, (on the fulfilment of the conditions implied in it), there will be free course and success. Its advantageousness will depend on the being firm and correct, (as) in marrying a young lady. There will be good fortune.

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Footnotes

124:XXXI With the 31st hexagram commences the Second Section of the Text. It is difficult to say why any division of the hexagrams should be made here, for the student tries in vain to discover any continuity in the thoughts of the author that is now broken. The First Section does not contain a class of subjects different from those which we find in the Second. That the division was made, however, at a very early time, appears from the sixth Appendix on the Sequence of the Hexagrams, where the writer sets forth an analogy between the first and second figures, representing heaven and earth, as the originators of all things, and this figure and the next, representing (each of them) husband and wife, as the originators of all the social relations. This, however, is far from carrying conviction to my mind. The division of the Text of the Yî into two sections is a fact of which I am unable to give a satisfactory account.

Hsien, as explained in the treatise on the Thwan, has here the meaning of mutual influence, and the duke of Kâu, on the various lines, always uses Kan for it in the sense of 'moving' or 'influencing to movement or action.' This is to my mind the subject of the hexagram considered as an essay,--'Influence; the different ways of bringing it to bear, and their issues.'

The Chinese character called hsien is , the graphic symbol for 'all, together, jointly.' Kan, the symbol for 'influencing,' has hsien in it as its phonetic constituent (though the changes in pronunciation make it hard for an English reader to appreciate this), with the addition of hsin, the symbol for the heart.' Thus kan, 'to affect or influence,' = + ; and it may have been that while the name or word was used with the significance of 'influencing,' the was purposely dropt from it, to indicate the most important element in the thing,--the absence of all purpose or motive. I venture to think that this would have been a device worthy of a diviner.

With regard to the idea of husband and wife being in the teaching of the hexagram, it is derived from the more recent symbolism of the eight trigrams ascribed to king Wăn, and exhibited on p. 33 and plate III. The more ancient usage of them is given in the paragraph on the Great Symbolism of Appendix II. The figure consists of Kăn 'the youngest son,' and over it Tui ( ), 'the youngest daughter.' These are in 'happy union.' p. 125 No influence, it is said, is so powerful and constant as that between husband and wife; and where these are young, it is especially active. Hence it is that Hsien is made up of Kăn and Tui. All this is to me very doubtful. I can dimly apprehend why the whole line ( ) was assumed as the symbol of strength and authority, and the broken line as that of weakness and submission. Beyond this I cannot follow Fû-hsî in his formation of the trigrams; and still less can I assent to the more recent symbolism of them ascribed to king Wăn.

Coming now to the figure, and its lines, the subject is that of mutual influence; and the author teaches that that influence, correct in itself, and for correct ends, is sure to be effective. He gives an instance,--the case of a man marrying a young lady, the regulations for which have been laid down in China from the earliest times with great strictness and particularity. Such influence will be effective and fortunate.

Line 1 is weak, and at the bottom of the hexagram. Though 4 be a proper correlate, yet the influence indicated by it must be ineffective. However much a man's great toes may be moved, that will not enable him to walk.

The calves cannot move of themselves. They follow the moving of the feet. The moving of them indicates too much anxiety to move. Line 2, moreover, is weak. But it is also the central line, and if its subject abide quiet, till he is acted on from above, there will be good fortune.

Neither can the thighs move of themselves. The attempt to p. 126 move them is inauspicious. Its subject, however, the line being strong, and in an odd place, will wish to move, and follows the subject of 4, which is understood to be the seat of the mind. He exercises his influence therefore with a mind and purpose, which is not good.

Line 4 is strong, but in an even place. It is the seat of the mind. Its subject therefore is warned to be firm and correct in order to a good issue. If he be wavering and uncertain, his influence will not extend beyond the circle of his friends.

The symbolism of line 5 refers to a part of the body behind the heart, and is supposed therefore to indicate an influence, ineffective indeed, but free from selfish motive, and not needing to be repented of.

Line 6 is weak, and in an even place. It is the topmost line also of the trigram of satisfaction. Its influence by means of speech will only be that of loquacity and flattery, the evil of which needs not to be pointed out.

THE HĂNG HEXAGRAM

Hăng indicates successful progress and no error (in what it denotes). But the advantage will come from being firm and correct; and movement in any direction whatever will be advantageous.

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correctness there will be evil; there will be no advantage in any way.

Footnotes

126:XXXII The subject of this hexagram may be given as perseverance in well doing, or in continuously acting out the law of one's p. 127 being. The sixth Appendix makes it a sequel of the previous figure. As that treats, it is said, of the relation between husband and wife, so this treats of the continuous observance of their respective duties. Hsien, we saw, is made up of Kăn, the symbol of the youngest son, and Tui, the symbol of the youngest daughter, attraction and influence between the sexes being strongest in youth. Hăng consists of Sun, 'the oldest daughter,' and Kăn, the oldest son. The couple are more staid. The wife occupies the lower place; and the relation between them is marked by her submission. This is sound doctrine, especially from a Chinese point of view; but I doubt whether such application of his teaching was in the mind of king Wăn. Given two parties, an inferior and superior in correlation. If both be continuously observant of what is correct, the inferior being also submissive, and the superior firm, good fortune and progress may be predicated of their course.

Line 1 has a proper correlate in 4; but between them are two strong lines; and it is itself weak. These two conditions are against its subject receiving much help from the subject of 4. He should be quiet, and not forward for action.

Line 2 is strong, but in the place of a weak line. Its position, however, being central, and its subject holding fast to the due mean, the unfavourable condition of an even place is more than counteracted.

Line 3 is strong, and in its proper place; but being beyond the centre of the trigram, its subject is too strong, and coming under p. 128 the attraction of his correlate in 6, he is supposed to be ready to abandon his place and virtue. He may try to be firm and correct, but circumstances are adverse to him.

Line 4 is strong in the place of a weak line, and suggests the symbolism of the duke of Kâu.

The weak 5th line responds to the strong 2nd, and may be supposed to represent a wife conscious of her weakness, and docilely submissive; which is good. A husband, however, and a man generally, has to assert himself, and lay down the rule of what is right.

In line 6 the principle of perseverance has run its course; the motive power of Kăn is exhausted. The line itself is weak. The violent efforts of its subject can only lead to evil.

THE THUN HEXAGRAM

Thun indicates successful progress (in its circumstances). To a small extent it will (still) be advantageous to be firm and correct.

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Footnotes

128:XXXIII Thun is the hexagram of the sixth month; the yin influence is represented by two weak lines, and has made good its footing in the year. The figure thus suggested to king Wăn the growth of small and unprincipled men in the state, before whose advance superior men were obliged to retire. This is the theme of his essay,--how, I when small men multiply and increase in power, p. 129 the necessity of the time requires superior men to withdraw before them.' Yet the auspice of Thun is not all bad. By firm correctness the threatened evil may be arrested to a small extent.

'A retiring tail' seems to suggest the idea of the subject of the lines hurrying away, which would only aggravate the evil and danger of the time.

'His purpose' in line 2 is the purpose to withdraw. The weak 2 responds correctly to the strong 5, and both are central. The purpose therefore is symbolled as in the text. The 'yellow' colour of the ox is introduced because of its being 'correct,' and of a piece with the central place of the line.

Line 3 has no proper correlate in 6 and its subject allows himself to be entangled and impeded by the subjects of 1 and 2. He is too familiar with them, and they presume, and fetter his movements;--compare Analects, 17. 25. He should keep them at a distance.

Line 4 has a correlate in 1, and is free to exercise the decision belonging to its subject. The line is the first in Khien, symbolic of strength.

In the Shû IV, v, Section 2. 9, the worthy Î Yin is made to say, 'The minister will not for favour or gain continue in an office whose work is done;' and the Khang-hsî editors refer to his words as an illustration of what is said on line 5. It has its correlate in 2, and its subject carries out the purpose to retire 'in an admirable way.'

Line 6 is strong, and with no correlate to detain it in 3. Its subject vigorously and happily carries out the idea of the hexagram.

THE TÂ KWANG HEXAGRAM

Tâ Kwang indicates that (under the conditions which it symbolises) it will be advantageous to be firm and correct.

p. 130

Footnotes

130:XXXIV The strong lines predominate in Tâ Kwang. It suggested to king Wăn a state or condition of things in which there was abundance of strength and vigour. Was strength alone enough for the conduct of affairs? No. He saw also in the figure that which suggested to him that strength should be held in subordination to the idea of right, and exerted only in harmony with it.

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This is the lesson of the hexagram, as sententiously expressed in the Thwan.

Line 1 is strong, in its correct place, and also the first line in Khien, the hexagram of strength, and the first line in Tâ Kwang. The idea of the figure might seem to be concentrated in it; and hence we have it symbolised by 'strength in the toes,' or 'advancing.' But such a measure is too bold to be undertaken by one in the lowest place, and moreover there is no proper correlate in 4. Hence comes the evil auspice.

Line 2 is strong, but the strength is tempered by its being in an even place, instead of being excited by it, as might be feared. Then the place is that in the centre. With firm correctness there will be good fortune.

Line 3 is strong, and in its proper place. It is at the top moreover of Khien. A small man so symbolled will use his strength to the utmost; but not so the superior man. For him the position is beyond the safe middle, and he will be cautious; and not injure himself, like the ram, by exerting his strength.

Line 4 is still strong, but in the place of a weak line; and this gives occasion to the cautions with which the symbolism commences. The subject of the line going forward thus cautiously, his strength will produce good effects, such as are described.

Line 5 is weak, and occupies a central place. Its subject will cease therefore to exert his strength; but this hexagram does not forbid the employment of strength, but would only control and p. 132 direct it. All that is said about him is that he will give no occasion for repentance.

Line 6 being at the top of Kăn, the symbol of movement, and at the top of Tâ Kwang, its subject may be expected to be active in exerting his strength; and through his weakness, the result would be as described. But he becomes conscious of his weakness, reflects and rests, and good fortune results, as he desists from the prosecution of his unwise efforts.

THE ŽIN HEXAGRAM

In Žin we see a prince who secures the tranquillity (of the people) presented on that account with numerous horses (by the king), and three times in a day received at interviews.

p. 132

p. 133

is perilous, but there will be good fortune. (Yet) however firm and correct he may be, there will be occasion for regret.

Footnotes

133:XXXV The Thwan of this hexagram expresses its subject more fully and plainly than that of any of the previous thirty-four. It is about a feudal prince whose services to the country have made him acceptable to his king. The king's favour has been shown to him by gifts and personal attentions such as form the theme of more than one ode in the Shih; see especially III, iii, 7. The symbolism of the lines dimly indicates the qualities of such a prince. Žin means to advance.' Hexagrams 46 and 53 agree with this in being called by names that indicate progress and advance. The advance in Žin is like that of the sun, 'the shining light, shining more and more to the perfect day.'

Line 1 is weak, and in the lowest place, and its correlate in 4 is neither central nor in its correct position. This indicates the small and obstructed beginnings of his subject. But by his firm correctness he pursues the way to good fortune; and though the king does not yet believe in him, he the more pursues his noble course.

Line 2 is weak, and its correlate in 5 is also weak. Its subject therefore has still to mourn in obscurity. But his position is central and correct, and he holds on his way, till success comes ere long. The symbolism says he receives it 'from his grandmother;' and readers will be startled by the extraordinary statement, as I was when I first read it. Literally the Text says 'the king's mother,' as P. Regis rendered it,--'Istam magnam felicitatem a matre regis recipit.' He also tries to give the name a historical reference;--to Thâi-Kiang, the grandmother of king Wăn; Thâi-Zăn, his mother; or to Thâi-sze, his wife, and the mother of king Wû and the duke of Kâu, all famous in Chinese history, and celebrated in the Shih. But 'king's father' and 'king's mother' are well-known Chinese appellations for 'grandfather' and 'grandmother.' This is the view given on the passage, by Khăng-žze, Kû Hsî, and the Khang-hsî editors, the latter of whom, indeed, account for the use of the name, instead of 'deceased mother,' which we find in hexagram 62, by the regulations observed in the ancestral temple. These authorities, moreover, all agree in saying that the name points us to line 5, the correlate of 2, and 'the lord of the hexagram.' Now the subject of line 5 is the sovereign, who at length acknowledges the worth of the feudal lord, and gives him p. 134 the great blessing. The 'New Digest of Comments on the Yî (1686),' in its paraphrase of the line, has, 'He receives at last this great blessing from the mild and compliant ruler.' I am not sure that 'motherly king' would not be the best and fairest translation of the phrase.

Canon McClatchie has a very astonishing note on the name, which he renders 'Imperial Mother' (p. 164):--'That is, the wife of Imperial Heaven (Juno), who occupies the "throne of the diagram," viz. the fifth stroke, which is soft and therefore feminine. She is the Great Ancestress of the human race. See Imp. Ed. vol. iv, Sect. v, p. 25, Com.' Why such additions to the written word?

Line 3 is weak, and in an odd place; but the subjects of 1 and 2 are possessed by the same desire to advance as the subject of this. A common trust and aim possess them; and hence the not unfavourable auspice.

Line 4 is strong, but it is in an even place, nor is it central. It suggests the idea of a marmot (? or rat), stealthily advancing. Nothing could be more opposed to the ideal of the feudal lord in the hexagram.

In line 5 that lord and his intelligent sovereign meet happily. He holds on his right course, indifferent as to results, but things are so ordered that he is, and will continue to be, crowned with success.

Line 6 is strong, and suggests the idea of its subject to the last continuing his advance, and that not only with firm correctness, but with strong force. The 'horns' are an emblem of threatening strength, and though he uses them only in his own state, and against the rebellious there, that such a prince should have any occasion to use force is matter for regret.

THE MING Î HEXAGRAM

Ming Î indicates that (in the circumstances which it denotes) it will be advantageous to realise the

p. 135

difficulty (of the position), and maintain firm correctness.

Footnotes

135:XXXVI In this hexagram we have the representation of a good and intelligent minister or officer going forward in the service of his country, notwithstanding the occupancy of the throne by a weak p. 136 and unsympathising sovereign. Hence comes its name of Ming Î, or 'Intelligence Wounded,' that is, injured and repressed. The treatment of the subject shows how such an officer will conduct himself, and maintain his purpose. The symbolism of the figure is treated of in the same way in the first and second Appendixes. Appendix VI merely says that the advance set forth in 35 is sure to meet with wounding, and hence Žin is followed by Ming Î.

Line 1 is strong, and in its right place;--its subject should be going forward. But the general signification of the hexagram supposes him to be wounded. The wound, however, being received at the very commencement of its action, is but slight. And hence conies the emblem of a bird hurt so as to be obliged to droop its wings. The subject then appears directly as 'the superior man.' He sees it to be his course to desist from the struggle for a time, and is so rapt in the thought that he can fast for three days and not think of it. When he does withdraw, opposition follows him; but it is implied that he holds on to his own good purpose.

Line 2 is weak, but also in its right place, and central; giving us the idea of an officer, obedient to duty and the right. His wound in the left thigh may impede his movements, but does not disable him. He finds means to save himself, and maintains his good purpose.

Line 3, strong and in a strong place, is the topmost line of the lower. trigram. It responds also to line 6, in which the idea of the sovereign, emblemed by the upper trigram, is concentrated. The lower trigram is the emblem of light or brightness, the idea of which again is expressed by the south, to which we turn when we look at the sun in its meridian height. Hence the subject of the p. 137 line becomes a hunter pursuing his game, and successfully. The good officer will be successful in his struggle; but let him not be over eager to put all things right at once.

Line 4 is weak, but in its right place. Kû Hsî says he does not understand the symbolism, as given in the Text. The translation indicates the view of it commonly accepted. The subject of the line evidently escapes from his position of danger with little damage.

Line 5 should be the place of the ruler or sovereign in the hexagram; but 6 is assigned as that place in Ming Î. The officer occupying 5, the centre of the upper trigram, and near to the sovereign, has his ideal in the count of Kî, whose action appears in the Shû, III, pp. 123, 127, 128. He is a historical personage.

Line 6 sets forth the fate of the ruler, who opposes himself to the officer who would do him good and intelligent service. Instead of becoming as the sun, enlightening all from the height of the sky, he is as the sun hidden below the earth. I can well believe that the writer had the last king of Shang in his mind.

THE KIÂ ZĂN HEXAGRAM

For (the realisation of what is taught in) Kiâ Zăn, (or for the regulation of the family), what is

p. 137

most advantageous is that the wife be firm and correct.

p. 138

enriching the family. There will be great good fortune.

Footnotes

138:XXXVII Kiâ Zăn, the name of the hexagram, simply means 'a household,' or 'the members of a family.' The subject of the essay based on the figure, however, is the regulation of the family, effected mainly by the co-operation of husband and wife in their several spheres, and only needing to become universal to secure the good order of the kingdom. The important place occupied by the wife in the family is seen in the short sentence of the Thwan. That she be firm and correct, and do her part well, is the first thing necessary to its regulation.

Line 1 is strong, and in a strong place. It suggests the necessity of strict rule in governing the family. Regulations must be established, and their observance strictly insisted on.

Line 2 is weak, and in the proper place for it,--the centre, moreover, of the lower trigram. It fitly represents the wife, and what is said on it tells us of her special sphere and duty; and that she should be unassuming in regard to all beyond her sphere; always being firm and correct. See the Shih, III, 350.

Line 3 is strong, and in an odd place. If the place were central, the strength would be tempered; but the subject of the line, in the topmost place of the trigram, may be expected to exceed in severity. But severity is not a bad thing in regulating a family;--it is better than laxity and indulgence.

Line 4 is weak, and in its proper place. The wife is again suggested to us, and we are told, that notwithstanding her being confined to the internal affairs of the household, she can do much to enrich the family.

The subject of the strong fifth line appears as the king. This may be the husband spoken of as also a king; or the real king whose merit is revealed first in his family, as often in the Shih, where king Wăn is the theme. The central place here tempers the display of the strength and power.

p. 139

Line 6 is also strong, and being in an even place, the subject of it might degenerate into stern severity, but he is supposed to be sincere, complete in his personal character and self-culture, and hence his action will only lead to good fortune.

THE KHWEI HEXAGRAM

Khwei indicates that, (notwithstanding the condition of things which it denotes), in small matters there will (still) be good success.

p. 140

line), and they blend their sincere desires together. The position is one of peril, but there will be no mistake.

Footnotes

140:XXXVIII Khwei denotes a social state in which division and mutual alienation prevail, and the hexagram teaches how in small matters this condition may be healed, and the way prepared for the cure of the whole system. The writer or writers of Appendixes I and II point out the indication in the figure of division and disunion according to their views. In Appendix VI those things appear as a necessary sequel to the regulation of the family; while it is impossible to discover any allusion to the family in the Text.

Line 1 is strong, and in an odd place. A successful course might be auspiced for its subject; but the correlate in line 4 is also strong; and therefore disappointment and repentance are likely to ensue. In the condition, however, indicated by Khwei, where people have a common virtue, they will help one another. Through the good services of 4, the other will not have to repent. His condition may be emblemed by a traveller's loss of his horses, which return to him of themselves.

Should he meet with bad men, however, let him not shrink from them. Communication with them will be of benefit. His good p. 141 may overcome their evil, and at least it will help to silence their slanderous tongues.

Line 5 is weak, and its subject is the proper correlate of the strong 2. They might meet openly; but for the separation and disunion that mark the time. A casual, as it were a stolen, interview, as in a bye-lane or passage, however will be useful, and may lead on to a better understanding.

Line 3 is weak, where it ought to be strong. Its correlate, however, in 6 is strong, and the relation between them might seem what it ought to be. But the weak 3 is between the strong lines in 2 and 4; and in a time of disunion there ensue the checking and repulsion emblemed in the Text. At the same time the subject of line 6 inflicts on that of 3 the punishments which are mentioned. It is thus bad for 3 at first, but we are told that in the end it will be well with him; and this will be due to the strength of the sixth line. The conclusion grows out of a conviction in the mind of the author that what is right and good is destined to triumph over what is wrong and bad. Disorder shall in the long run give place to order, and disunion to union.

Line 4 has no proper correlate, and might seem to be solitary. But, as we saw on line 1, in this hexagram, correlates of the same class help each other. Hence the subjects of 4 and 1, meeting together, work with good will and success.

The place of 5 is odd, but the line itself is weak, so that there might arise occasion for repentance. But the strong 2 is a proper correlate to the weak 5. Five being the sovereign's place, the subject of 2 is styled the sovereign's relative, of the same surname p. 142 with him, and head of some branch of the descendants of the royal house. It is as easy for 5, so supported, to deal with the disunion of the time, as to bite through a piece of skin.

Line 6 is an even place, and yet the line is strong;--what can its subject effect? He looks at 3, which, as weak, is a proper correlate; but he looks with the evil eye of disunion. The subject of 3 appears no better than a filthy pig, nor more real than an impossible carriage-load of ghosts. He bends his bow against him, but he unbends it, discovering a friend in 3, as x did in 4, and 5 in 2. He acts and with good luck, comparable to the falling rain, which results from the happy union of the yang and yin in nature.

THE KIEN HEXAGRAM

In (the state indicated by) Kien advantage will be found in the south-west, and the contrary in the north-east. It will be advantageous (also) to meet

p. 142

with the great man. (In these circumstances), with firmness and correctness, there will be good fortune.

p. 143

while his remaining stationary will be (productive of) great (merit). There will be good fortune, and it will be advantageous to meet with the great man.

Footnotes

143:XXXIX Kien is the symbol for incompetency in the feet and legs, involving difficulty in walking; hence it is used in this hexagram to indicate a state of the kingdom which makes the government of it an arduous task. How this task may be successfully performed, now by activity on the part of the ruler, and now by a discreet inactivity:--this is what the figure teaches, or at least gives hints about. For the development of the meaning of the symbolic character from the structure of the lineal figure, see Appendixes I and II.

The Thwan seems to require three things--attention to place, the presence of the great man, and the firm observance of correctness--in order to cope successfully with the difficulties of the situation. The first thing is enigmatically expressed, and the language should be compared with what we find in the Thwan of hexagrams 2 and 40. Referring to Figure 2, in Plate III, we find that, according to Win's arrangement of the trigrams, the southwest is occupied by Khwăn ( ), and the north-east by Kăn ( ). The former represents the champaign country; the latter, the mountainous region. The former is easily traversed and held; the latter, with difficulty. The attention to place thus becomes transformed into a calculation of circumstances; those that promise success in an enterprise, which should be taken advantage of, and those that threaten difficulty and failure, which should be shunned.

This is the generally accepted view of this difficult passage. The Khang-hsî editors have a view of their own. I have been myself inclined to find less symbolism in it, and to take the southwest as the regions in the south and west of the kingdom, which we know from the Shih were more especially devoted to Wăn and his house, while the strength of the kings of Shang lay in the north and east.

'The idea of "the great man," Mencius's "minister of Heaven,"' is illustrated by the strong line in the fifth place, having for its correlate the weak line in 2. But favourableness of circumstances and place, and the presence of the great man do not dispense from the observance of firm correctness. Throughout these essays of the Yî this is always insisted on.

p. 144

Line 1 is weak, whereas it ought to be strong as being in an odd place. If its subject advance, he will not be able to cope with the difficulties of the situation, but be overwhelmed by them. Let him wait for a more favourable time.

Line 2 is weak, but in its proper place. Its correlation with the strong 5, and consequent significance, are well set forth.

Line 3 is strong, and in a place of strength; but its correlate in 6 is weak, so that the advance of its subject would be unsupported. He waits therefore for a better time, and cherishes the subjects of the two lines below, who naturally cling to him.

Line 4 is weak, and, though in its proper place, its subject could do little of himself. He is immediately below the king or great man, however, and cultivates his loyal attachment to him, waiting for the time when he shall be required to act.

Line 5 is the king, the man great and strong. He can cope with the difficulties, and the subjects of 2 and the other lines of the lower trigram give their help.

The action of the hexagram is over; where can the weak 6 go forward to? Let him abide where he is, and serve the great man immediately below him. So shall he also be great;--in meritorious action at least.

THE KIEH HEXAGRAM

In (the state indicated by) Kieh advantage will be found in the south-west. If no (further) operations be called for, there will be good fortune in coming back (to the old conditions). If some operations be called for, there will be good fortune in the early conducting of them.

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4. (To the subject of) the fourth NINE, undivided, (it is said), 'Remove your toes. Friends will (then) come, between you and whom there will be mutual confidence.'

Footnotes

145:XL Kieh is the symbol of loosing,--untying a knot or unravelling a complication; and as the name of this hexagram, it denotes a condition in which the obstruction and difficulty indicated by the preceding Kieh have been removed. The object of the author is to show, as if from the lines of the figure, how this new and better state of the kingdom is to be dealt with. See what is said on the Thwan of Kien for 'the advantage to be found in the south-west.' If further active operations be not necessary to complete the subjugation of the country, the sooner things fall into their old channels the better. The new masters of the kingdom should not be anxious to change all the old manners and ways. Let them do, as the duke of Kâu actually did do with the subjugated people of Shang. If p. 146 further operations be necessary, let them be carried through without delay. Nothing is said in the Thwan about the discountenancing and removal of small men,--unworthy ministers or officers; but that subject appears in more! than one of the lines.

There is a weak line, instead of a strong, in the first place; but this is compensated for by its strong correlate in 4.

Kû Hsî says he does not understand the symbolism under line 2. The place is even, but the line itself is strong; the strength therefore is modified or tempered. And 2 is the correlate of the ruler in 5. We are to look to its subject therefore for a minister striving to realise the idea of the hexagram, and pacify the subdued kingdom. He becomes a hunter, and disposes of unworthy men, represented by 'the three foxes.' He also gets the yellow arrows, the instruments used in war or in hunting, whose colour is 'correct,' and whose form is 'straight.' His firm correctness will be good.

Line 3 is weak, when it should be strong; and occupying, as it does, the topmost place of the lower trigram, it suggests the symbolism of a porter in a carriage. People will say, 'How did he get there? The things cannot be his own.' And robbers will attack and plunder him. The subject of the line cannot protect himself, nor accomplish anything good.

What is said on the fourth line appears in the form of an address to its subject. The line is strong in an even place, and 1, its correlate, is weak in an odd place. Such a union will not be productive of good. In the symbolism 1 becomes the toe of the subject of 4. How the friend or friends, who are to come to him on the removal of this toe, are represented, I do not perceive.

Line 5 is weak in an odd place; but the place is that of the ruler, to whom it belongs to perfect the idea of the hexagram by p. 147 removing all that is contrary to the peace and good order of the kingdom. It will be his duty to remove especially all the small men represented by the divided lines, which he can do with the help of his strong correlate in 2. Then even the small men will change their ways, and repair to him.

Line 6 is the highest line in the figure, but not the place of the ruler. Hence it appears as occupied by a feudal duke, who carries out the idea of the figure against small men, according to the symbolism employed.

THE SUN HEXAGRAM

In (what is denoted by) Sun, if there be sincerity (in him who employs it), there will be great good fortune:--freedom from error; firmness and correctness that can be maintained; and advantage in every

p. 147

movement that shall be made. In what shall this (sincerity in the exercise of Sun) be employed? (Even) in sacrifice two baskets of grain, (though there be nothing else), may be presented.

2 . The second NINE, undivided, shows that it will be advantageous for its subject to maintain a firm correctness, and that action on his part will be evil. He can give increase (to his correlate) without taking from himself

p. 148

Footnotes

148:XLI The interpretation of this hexagram is encompassed with great difficulties. Sun is the symbol for the idea of diminishing or diminution; and what is said in Appendix I has made it to be accepted as teaching the duty of the subject to take of what is his and contribute to his ruler, or the expenses of the government under which he lives; in other words, readily and cheerfully to pay his taxes. P. Regis says, Sun seu (vectigalis causa) minuere . . . est valde utile;' and Canon McClatchie in translating Appendix I has:--'Diminishing (by taxation for instance) .... is very lucky.' Possibly, king Wăn may have seen in the figures the subject of taxation; but the symbolism of his son takes a much wider range. My own reading of the figure and Text comes near to the view of Khăng-žze, that 'every diminution and repression of what we have in excess to bring it into accordance with right and reason is comprehended under Sun.'

Let there be sincerity in doing this, and it will lead to the happiest results. It will lead to great success in great things; and if the correction, or it may be a contribution towards it, appear to be very small, yet it will be accepted;--as in the most solemn religious service. This is substantially the view of the hexagram approved by the Khang-hsî editors.

Line 1 is strong, and its correlate in 4 is weak. Its subject will wish to help the subject of 4; but will not leave anything of his own undone in (loin. so. Nor will he diminish of his own for the other without due deliberation.

Line 2 is strong, and in the central place. But it is in the place of a weak line, and its subject should maintain his position without moving to help his correlate in 5. Maintaining his own firm correctness is the best way to help him.

Paragraph 3 is to my mind full of obscurity. Kû Hsî, adopting the view in Appendix I, says that the lower trigram was originally Khien, three undivided lines, like 'three men walking together,' p. 149 and that the third line, taken away and made to be the topmost line, or the third, in what was originally Khwăn, three divided lines, was 'the putting away of one man;' and that then the change of place by 3 and 6, while they continued their proper correlation, was, one going away, and finding his friend. I cannot lay hold of any thread of reason in this.

Line 4 is weak, and in an even place; like an individual ailing and unable to perform his proper work. But the correlate in 1 is strong; and is made to hasten to its relief. The 'joy' of the line shows the desire of its subject to do his part in the work of the hexagram.

Line 5 is the seat of the ruler, who is here humble, and welcomes the assistance of his correlate, the subject of 2. He is a ruler whom all his subjects of ability will rejoice to serve in every possible way; and the result will be great good fortune.

Line 6 has been changed from a weak into a strong line from line 3; has received therefore the greatest increase, and will carry out the idea of the hexagram in the highest degree and style. But he can give increase to others without diminishing his own resources, and of course the benefit he will confer will be incalculable. Ministers will come to serve him; and not one from each clan merely, but many. Such is the substance of what is said on this last paragraph. I confess that I only discern the meaning darkly.

THE YÎ HEXAGRAM

Yî indicates that (in the state which it denotes) there will be advantage in every movement which shall be undertaken, that it will be advantageous (even) to cross the great stream.

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a great movement. If it be greatly fortunate, no blame will be imputed to him.

Footnotes

150:XLII Yî has the opposite meaning to Sun, and is the symbol of addition or increasing. What king Wăn had in his mind, in connexion with the hexagram, was a ruler or a government operating p. 151 so as to dispense benefits to, and increase the resources of all the people. Two indications are evident in the lines;--the strong line in the ruler's seat, or the fifth line, and the weak line in the correlative place of 2. Whether there be other indications in the figure or its component trigrams will be considered in dealing with the Appendixes. The writer might well say, on general grounds, of the ruler whom he had in mind, that he would be successful in his enterprises and overcome the greatest difficulties.

Line 1 is strong, but its low position might seem to debar its subject from any great enterprise. Favoured as he is, however, according to the general idea of the hexagram, and specially responding to the proper correlate in 4, it is natural that he should make a movement; and great success will make his rashness be forgotten.

With paragraph 2 compare paragraph 5 of the preceding hexagram. Line 2 is weak, but in the centre, and is the correlate of 5. Friends give its subject the valuable gifts mentioned; 'that is,' says Kwo Yung (Sung dynasty), 'men benefit him; the oracles of the divination are in his favour,--spirits, that is, benefit him; and finally, when the king sacrifices to God, He accepts. Heaven confers benefit from above.'

Line 3 is weak, neither central, nor in its correct position. It would seem therefore that its subject should have no increase given to him. But it is the time for giving increase, and the idea of his receiving it by means of evil things is put into the line. That such things serve for reproof and correction is well known to Chinese moralists. But the paragraph goes on also to caution and admonish.

Line 4 is the place for a minister, near to that of the ruler. Its subject is weak, but his place is appropriate, and as he follows the p. 152 due course, his ruler will listen to him, and he will be a support in the most critical movements. Changing the capital from place to place was frequent in the feudal times of China. That of Shang, which preceded Kâu, was changed five times.

Line 5 is strong, in its fitting position, and central. It is the seat of the ruler, who has his proper correlate in 2. Everything good, according to the conditions of the hexagram, therefore, may be said of him;--as is done.

Line 6 is also strong; but it should be weak. Occupying the topmost place of the figure, its subject will concentrate his powers in the increase of himself, and not think of benefiting those below him; and the consequence will be as described.

THE KWÂI HEXAGRAM

Kwâi requires (in him who would fulfil its meaning) the exhibition (of the culprit's guilt) in the royal court, and a sincere and earnest appeal (for sympathy

p. 152

and support), with a consciousness of the peril (involved in cutting off the criminal). He should (also) make announcement in his own city, and show that it will not be well to have recourse at once to arms. (In this way) there will be advantage in whatever he shall go forward to.

p. 153

Footnotes

153:XLIII In Kwâi we have the hexagram of the third month, when the last remnant, cold and dark, of winter, represented by the sixth line, is about to disappear before the advance of the warm and bright days of the approaching summer. In the yin line at the top king Wăn saw the symbol of a small or bad man, a feudal prince or high minister, lending his power to maintain a corrupt government, or, it might be, a dynasty that was waxen old and ready to vanish away; and in the five undivided lines he saw the representatives of good order, or, it might be, the dynasty which was to supersede the other. This then is the subject of the hexagram,--how bad men, statesmen corrupt and yet powerful, are to be put out of the way. And he who would accomplish the task must do so by the force of his character more than by force of arms, and by producing a general sympathy on his side.

The Thwan says that he must openly denounce the criminal in the court, seek to awaken general sympathy, and at the same time go about his enterprise, conscious of its difficulty and danger. Among his own adherents, moreover, as if it were in his own city, he must make it understood how unwillingly he takes up arms. Then let him go forward, and success will attend him.

Line 1 is strong, the first line of that trigram, which expresses the idea of strength. But it is in the lowest place. The stage of p. 154 the enterprise is too early, and the preparation too small to make victory certain. Its subject had better not take the field.

Line 2 is strong, and central, and its subject is possessed with the determination to do his part in the work of removal. But his eagerness is tempered by his occupancy of an even place; and he is cautious, and no attempts, however artful, to harm him will take effect.

Line 3 is strong, and its subject displays his purpose too eagerly. Being beyond the central position, moreover, gives an indication of evil. Lines 3 and 6 are also proper correlates; and, as elsewhere in the Yî, the meeting of yin and yang lines is associated with falling rain. The subject of 3, therefore, communicates with 6, in a way that annoys his associates; but nevertheless he commits no error, and, in the end, incurs no blame.

Line 4 is not in the centre, nor in an odd place, appropriate to it as undivided. Its subject therefore will not be at rest, nor able to do anything to accomplish the idea of the hexagram. He is symbolised by a culprit, who, according to the ancient and modern custom of Chinese courts, has been bastinadoed till he presents the appearance in the Text. Alone he can do nothing; if he could follow others, like a sheep led along, he might accomplish something, but he will not listen to advice.

Purslain grows in shady places, and hence we find it here in close contiguity to the topmost line, which is yin. As 5 is the ruler's seat, evil may come to him from such contiguity, and strenuous efforts must be made to prevent such an evil. The subject of the line, the ruler in the central place, will commit no error. It must be allowed that the symbolism in this line is not easily managed.

The subject of the 6th line, standing alone, may be easily disposed of.

THE KÂU HEXAGRAM

Kâu shows a female who is bold and strong. It will not be good to marry (such) a female.

p. 155

Footnotes

155:XLIV The single, divided, line at the top of Kwâi, the hexagram of the third month, has been displaced, and Khien has ruled over the fourth month of the year. But the innings of the divided line commence again; and here we have in Kâu the hexagram of the fifth month, when light and heat are supposed both to begin to be less.

In that divided line Wăn saw the symbol of the small or unworthy man, beginning to insinuate himself into the government p. 156 of the country. His influence, if unchecked, would go on to grow, and he would displace one good man after another, and fill the vacant seats with others like-minded with himself. The object of Wăn in his Thwan, therefore, was to enjoin resistance to the encroachment of this bad man.

Kâu is defined as giving the idea of suddenly and casually encountering or meeting with. So does the divided line appear all at once in the figure. And this significance of the name rules in the interpretation of the lines, so as to set on one side the more common interpretation of them according to the correlation; showing how the meaning of the figures was put into them from the minds of Wăn and Tan in the first place. The sentiments of the Text are not learned from them; but they are forced and twisted, often fantastically, and made to appear to give those sentiments forth of themselves.

Here the first line, divided, where it ought to be the contrary, becomes the symbol of a bold, bad woman, who appears unexpectedly on the scene, and wishes to subdue or win all the five strong lines to herself. No one would contract a marriage with such a female; and every good servant of his country will try to repel the entrance into the government of every officer who can be so symbolised.

Line 1 represents the bête noire of the figure. If its subject can be kept back, the method of firm government and order will proceed. If he cannot be restrained, he will become disgusting and dangerous. It is not enough for the carriage to be stopt by the metal drag; it is also tied or bound to some steadfast object. Internal and external restraints should be opposed to the bad man.

The 'wallet of fish' under line 2 is supposed to symbolise the p. 157 subject of line r. It has come into the possession of the subject of 2, by virtue of the meaning of the name Kâu, which I have pointed out. With his strength therefore he can repress the advance of 1. He becomes in fact 'the lord of the hexagram,' and all the other strong lines are merely guests; and especially is it important that he should prevent 1 from approaching them. This is a common explanation of what is said under this second line. It seems farfetched; but I can neither find nor devise anything better.

With what is said on line 3, compare the fourth paragraph of the duke's Text on the preceding hexagram. Line 3 is strong, but has gone beyond the central place; has no correlate above; and is cut off from 1 by the intervening 2. It cannot do much therefore against 1; but its aim being to repress that, there will be no great error.

Line 1 is the proper correlate of 4; but it has already met and associated with 2. The subject of 4 therefore stands alone; and evil to him may be looked for.

Line 5 is strong, and in the ruler's place. Its relation to 1 is like that of a forest tree to the spreading gourd. But let not its subject use force to destroy or repress the growth of 1; but let him restrain himself and keep his excellence concealed, and Heaven will set its seal to his virtue.

The symbolism of line 6 is difficult to understand, though the meaning of what is said is pretty clear. The Khang-hsî editors observe:--'The subject of this line is like an officer who has withdrawn from the world. He can accomplish no service for the time; but his person is removed from the workers of disorder.'

THE ŽHUI HEXAGRAM

In (the state denoted by) Žhui, the king will repair to his ancestral temple. It will be advantageous

p. 157

(also) to meet with the great man; and then there will be progress and success, though the advantage must come through firm correctness. The use of great victims will conduce to good fortune; and in whatever direction movement is made, it will be advantageous.

p. 158

to smiles. He need not mind (the temporary difficulty); as he goes forward, there will be no error.

Footnotes

158:XLV Žhui denotes collecting together, or things so collected and hence this hexagram concerns the state of the kingdom when a happy union prevails between the sovereign and his ministers, between high and low; and replies in a vague way to the question how this state is to be preserved; by the influence of religion, and the great man, who is a sage upon the throne.

He, 'the king,' will repair to his ancestral temple, and meet in spirit there with the spirits of his ancestors. Whatever he does, being correct and right, will succeed. His religious services will be distinguished by their dignity and splendour. His victims will p. 159 he the best that can be obtained, and other things will be in harmony with them.

Line 1 is weak, and in the place of a strong line. It has a proper correlate in 4, but is separated from him by the intervention of two weak lines. The consequence of these things is supposed to be expressed in the first part of the symbolism; but the subject of the line is possessed by the desire for union, which is the theme of the hexagram. Calling out to his correlate for help, he obtains it, and his sorrow is turned into joy.

Line 2 is in its proper place, and responds to the strong ruler in 5, who encourages and helps the advance of its subject. He possesses also the sincerity, proper to him in his central position; and though he were able to offer only the sacrifice of the spring, small compared with the fulness of the sacrifices in summer and autumn, it would be accepted.

Line 3 is weak, in the place of a strong line, and advanced from the central place. The topmost line, moreover, is no proper correlate. But its subject is possessed by the desire for union; and though 2 and 4 decline to associate with him, he presses on to 6, which is also desirous of union. That common desire brings them together, notwithstanding 3 and 6 are both divided lines; and with difficulty the subject of 3 accomplishes his object.

[But that an ordinary rule for interpreting the lineal indications may be thus overruled by extraordinary considerations shows how much of fancy there is in the symbolism or in the commentaries on it.]

Line 4 has its correlate in 1, and is near to the ruling line in 5. We may expect a good auspice for it; but its being strong in an odd place, calls for the caution which is insinuated.

Line 5 is strong, central, and in its correct position. Through p. 160 its subject there may be expected the full realisation of the idea of the hexagram.

Line 6, weak, and at the extremity of the figure, is still anxious for union; but he has no proper correlate, and all below are united in 5. Its subject mourns his solitary condition; and his good feeling will preserve him from error and blame.

THE SHĂNG HEXAGRAM

Shăng indicates that (under its conditions) there will be great progress and success. Seeking by

p. 160

(the qualities implied in it) to meet with the great man, its subject need have no anxiety. Advance to the south will be fortunate.

Footnotes

160:XLVI The character Shăng is used of advancing in an upward direction, 'advancing and ascending.' And here, as the name of the hexagram, it denotes the advance of a good officer to the highest pinnacle of distinction. The second line, in the centre of the lower trigram, is strong, but the strength is tempered by its being in an even place. As the representative of the subject of the p. 161 hexagram, it shows him to be possessed of modesty and force. Then the ruler's seat, the fifth place, is occupied by a divided line, indicating that he will welcome the advance of 2. The officer therefore both has the qualities that fit him to advance, and a favourable opportunity to do so. The result of his advance will be fortunate.

It is said that after he has met with the ruler, 'the great man' in 5, 'advance to the south will be fortunate.' Kû Hsî and other critics say that 'advancing to the south' is equivalent simply to 'advancing forwards.' The south is the region of brightness and warmth; advance towards it will be a joyful progress. As P. Regis explains the phrase, the traveller will proceed 'via recta simillima illi qua itur ad austrates felicesque plagas.'

Line 1 is weak, where it should be strong; its subject, that is, is humble and docile. Those above him, therefore, welcome his advance. Another interpretation of the line is suggested by Appendix I; which deserves consideration. As the first line of Sun, moreover, it may be supposed to concentrate in itself its attribute of docility, and be the lord of the trigram.

See on the second line of Žhui. Line 2 is strong, and the weak 5 is its proper correlate. We have a strong officer serving a weak ruler; he could not do so unless he were penetrated with a sincere and devoted loyalty.

Paragraph 3 describes the boldness and fearlessness of the advance of the third line. According to the Khang-hsî editors, who, I think, are right, there is a shade of condemnation in the line. Its subject is too bold.

Line 4 occupies the place of a great minister, in immediate contiguity to his ruler, who confides in him, and raises him to the highest distinction as a feudal prince. The mention of mount p. 162 Khî, at the foot of which was the capital of the lords of Kâu, seems to take the paragraph out of the sphere of symbolism into that of history. 'The king' in it is the last sovereign of Shang; the feudal prince in it is Wăn.

In line 5 the advance has reached the highest point of dignity, and firm correctness is specially called for. 'Ascending the steps of a stair' may intimate, as Kû Hsî says, the ease of the advance; or according to others (the Khang-hsî editors among them), its ceremonious manner.

What can the subject of the hexagram want more? He has gained all his wishes, and still he is for going onwards. His advance is blind and foolish; and only the most exact correctness will save him from the consequences.

THE KHWĂN HEXAGRAM

In (the condition denoted by) Khwăn there may (yet be) progress and success. For the firm and

p. 162

correct, the (really) great man, there will be good fortune. He will fall into no error. If he make speeches, his words cannot be made good.

p. 163

Footnotes

163:XLVII The character Khwăn presents us with the picture of a tree within an enclosure; 'a plant,' according to Williams, 'fading for want of room;' 'a tree,' according to Tai Tung, 'not allowed to spread its branches.' However this be, the term conveys the idea of being straitened and distressed; and this hexagram indicates a state of things in which the order and government that would conduce to the well-being of the country can hardly get the development, which, by skilful management on the part of 'the great man' and others, is finally secured for them.

Looking at the figure we see that the two central places are occupied by strong lines; but 2 is confined between 1 and 3, both of which are weak, and 5 (the ruler), as well as 4 (his minister), is covered by the weak 6; all which peculiarities are held to indicate the repression or straitening of good men by bad. For the way in which the same view is derived from the great symbolism, see Appendix II, in loc.

The concluding sentence of the Thwan is literally, 'If he speak, he will not be believed;' but the Khang-hsî editors give sufficient reasons for changing one character so as to give the meaning in the translation. 'Actions,' not words, are what are required in the case.

The symbolism of 'buttocks' is rather a favourite with the duke of Kâu;--'chacun à son goût.' The poor subject of line 1 sitting on a mere stump, which affords him no shelter, is indeed badly off. The line is at the bottom of the trigram indicating peril, and 4, which is its proper correlate, is so circumstanced as not to be able p. 164 to render it help; hence comes the unfavourable auspice. 'Three years' is used, as often, for a long time.

The three strong lines in the figure (2, 4, and 5) are all held to represent 'superior men;' and their being straitened is not in their persons or estates, but in their principles which are denied development. Hence the subject of 2 is straitened while he fares sumptuously. His correlate in 5, though not quite proper, occupies the ruler's place, and comes to his help. That it is the ruler who comes appears from his red or vermillion knee-covers, different from the scarlet knee-covers worn by nobles, as in paragraph 5. Let 2 cultivate his sincerity and do the work of the hexagram as if he were sacrificing to spiritual beings; and then, if he keep quiet, all will be well.

For I a full explanation' of paragraph 3 Kû Hsî refers his readers to what Confucius is made to say on it in Appendix III, ii, 35. The reader, however, will probably not find much light in that passage. The Khang-hsî editors say here:--'The subjects of the three divided lines (1, 3, and 6) are all unable to deal aright with the straitened state indicated by the figure. The first is at the bottom, sitting and distressed. The second, occupies the third place, where he may either advance or retreat; and he advances and is distressed. Wounded abroad, he returns to his family, and finds none to receive him; so graphically is there set forth the distress which reckless action brings.'

Line 4 is the proper correlate of 1, but it is a strong line in an even place, and its assistance is given dilatorily. Then 1 is overridden by 2, which is represented by 'a chariot of metal.' It is difficult for the subjects of 1 and 4 to come together, and effect much; but 4 is near 5, which is also a strong line. Through a p. 165 common sympathy, the subject of 5 will have a measure of success. So the symbolism of this line has been explained,--not very satisfactorily.

Line 5 is repressed by 6, and pressed on by 4. Above and below its subject is wounded. Especially is he straitened by the minister in 4, with his scarlet knee-covers. But the upper trigram is Tui, with the quality of complacent satisfaction. And this indicates, it is said, that the subject of 5 gets on notwithstanding his straits, especially by his sincerity. This explanation is not more satisfactory than the last.

Line 6 is at the top of the figure, where the distress may be supposed to reach its height. Its subject appears bound and on a perilous summit. But his extremity is also his opportunity. He is moved to think of repenting; and if he do repent, and go forward, his doing so will be fortunate.

THE ŽING HEXAGRAM

(Looking at) Žing, (we think of) how (the site of) a town may be changed, while (the fashion of) its

p. 165

wells undergoes no change. (The water of a well) never disappears and never receives (any great) increase, and those who come and those who go can draw and enjoy the benefit. If (the drawing) have nearly been accomplished, but, before the rope has quite reached the water, the bucket is broken, this is evil.

p. 166

Footnotes

166:XLVIII Žing, which gives its name to this hexagram, is the symbol of a well. The character originally was pictorial ( ), intended to represent a portion of land, divided into nine parts, the central portion belonging to the government, and being cultivated by the joint labour of the eight families settled on the other divisions. In the centre of it, moreover, was a well, which was the joint property of all the occupants.

What is said on Žing might be styled 'Moralisings on a well,' or Lessons to be learned from a well for the good order and government of a country.' What a well is to those in its neighbourhood, and indeed to men in general, that is government to a people. If rulers would only rightly appreciate the principles of government handed down from the good ages of the past, and faithfully apply them to the regulation of the present, they would be blessed themselves and their people with them.

In the Thwan we have the well, substantially the same through many changes of society; a sure source of dependance to men, for their refreshment and for use in their cultivation of the ground. Its form is what I have seen in the plains of northern China; what may be seen among ourselves in many places in Europe. It is deep, and the water is drawn up by a vessel let down from the top; and the value of the well depends on the water being actually raised. And so the principles of government must be actually carried out.

Line 1, being weak, and at the very bottom of the figure, suggests, or is made to suggest, the symbolism of it. Many men in authority are like such a well; corrupt, useless, unregarded.

Line 2 is strong, and might very well symbolise an active spring, ever feeding the well and, through it, the ground and its cultivators; but it is in an inappropriate place, and has no proper correlate. p. 167 Its cool waters cannot be brought to the top. So important is it that the ministers of a country should be able and willing rightly to administer its government. In the account of the ancient Shun it is stated that he once saved his life by an opening in the lining of a well.

Line 3 is a strong line, in its proper place; and must represent an able minister or officer. But though the well is clear, no use is made of it. I do not find anything in the figure that can be connected with this fact. The author was wise beyond his lines. After the first sentence of the paragraph, the duke of Kâu ceases from his function of making emblems; reflects and moralises.

Line 4 is weak, but in its proper place. Its subject is not to be condemned, but neither is he to be praised. He takes care of himself, but does nothing for others.

Line 5 is strong, and in its right place. The place is that of the ruler, and suggests the well, full of clear water, which is drawn up, and performs its useful work. Such is the good Head of government to his people.

Line 6 is in its proper place, but weak. If the general idea of the figure was different, a bad auspice might be drawn from it. But here we see in it the symbol of the water drawn up, and the top uncovered so that the use of the well is free to all. Then the mention of 'sincerity' suggests the inexhaustibleness of the elemental supply.

THE KO HEXAGRAM

(What takes place as indicated by) Ko is believed in only after it has been accomplished. There will be great progress and success. Advantage will come from being firm and correct. (In that case) occasion for repentance will disappear.

p. 168

Footnotes

168:XLIX The character called Ko or Keh is used here in the sense of changing. Originally used for the skin of an animal or bird, alive or dead, it received the significance of changing at a very early time. Its earliest appearance, indeed, in the first Book of the Shû, is in that sense. How the transition was made from the idea of a skin or hide to that of change is a subject that need not be entered on here. The author has before him the subject of changes occurring--called for--in the state of the country; it may be on the greatest scale. The necessity of them is recognised, and hints are p. 169 given as to the spirit and manner in which they should be brought about.

For the way in which the notion of change is brought out of the trigrams of the figure, see Appendixes I and II. It is assumed in the Thwan that change is viewed by people generally with suspicion and dislike, and should not be made hastily. When made as a necessity, and its good effects appear, the issues will be great and good. A proved necessity for them beforehand; and a firm correctness in the conduct of them:--these are the conditions by which changes should be regulated.

Line 1, at the bottom of the figure, may be taken as denoting change made at too early a period. It has no proper correlate or helper, moreover, above. Hence its subject is represented as tied up, unable to take any action.

Line 2, though weak, is in its correct place. It is in the centre also of the trigram Lî, signifying brightness and intelligence, and has a proper correlate in the strong 5. Let its subject take action in the way of change.

The symbolism of paragraph 3 is twofold. The line is strong, and in the correct position, but it has passed the centre of Sun and is on its outward verge. These conditions may dispose its subject to reckless and violent changing which would be bad. But if he act cautiously and with due deliberation, he may take action, and he will be believed in.

Line 4 is strong, but in the place of a weak line. This might vitiate any action of its subject in the way of change, and give occasion for repentance. But other conditions are intimated that p. 170 will have a contrary effect; and if he have further secured general confidence, he may proceed to the greatest changes, even to change the dynasty,--'with good fortune.' The conditions favourable to his action are said to be such as these:--The line has passed from the lower trigram into the upper; water and fire come in it into contact; the fourth place is that of the minister immediately below the ruler's seat. All these considerations demand action from the subject of 4 in harmony with the idea of the hexagram.

Line 5 has every quality proper to 'the lord of the hexagram,' and his action will be in every way beneficial. He is symbolled by the tiger; and the changes which he makes by the bright stripes of the tiger when he has changed his coat.

Line 6 is weak, but its subject is penetrated with the spirit of the hexagram. If its subject be a superior man, only inferior to 'the great man,' immediately below, the changes he makes will be inferior only to his. If he be a small man, he will be compliant and submissive. The lesson for him, however, is to abide firm and correct without taking any action of his own.

THE TING HEXAGRAM

Ting gives the intimation of great progress and success.

p. 170

advantage in its getting rid of what was bad in it. (Or it shows us) the concubine (whose position is improved) by means of her son. There will be no error.

p. 171

Footnotes

171:L Ting was originally a pictorial character, representing a caldron with three feet and two ears, used for cooking and preparing food for the table (the mat in old times) and the altar. The picture has disappeared from the character, but it is said that in the hexagram we have an outline from which fancy may construct the vessel. The lower line, divided, represents its feet; lines 2, 3, 4, all undivided, represent the body of it; line 5, divided, represents its two ears; and line 6, undivided, the handle by which it was carried, or suspended from a hook. Appendix VI makes Ting follow Ko in the order of the hexagrams, because there is no changer of the appearance and character of things equal to the furnace and caldron!

Ting and Žing (48) are the only two hexagrams named from things in ordinary use with men; and they are both descriptive of the government's work of nourishing. There are three hexagrams of which that is the theme, Î (27), under which we are told in Appendix I that 'the sages nourished men of worth, by means of them to reach to the myriads of the people.' Žing treats of the nourishment of the people generally by the government through its agricultural and other methods; Ting treats of the nourishment of men of talents and virtue; and that being understood, it is said, without more ado, that it 'intimates great progress and success.' The Text that follows, however, is more difficult to interpret than that of Žing.

Line 1 is weak, and little or nothing can be expected from its subject. But it has a proper correlate in the strong 4; and the disastrous overthrow, causing the feet to be directed towards 4, is understood to be lucky, as accelerating the co-operation of their two lines! The overturned caldron is thereby emptied of bad stuff that had accumulated in it!! The writer uses another illustration, which comes to the same thing. A concubine is less honourable than a wife,--like the overthrown caldron. But if she have a son, p. 172 while the proper wife has none, he will be his father's heir, and the mother, the concubine, will share in the honour of his position. Thus the issue of what was so unpromising is good. At least 'there is no mistake.' The above is what is found in the best commentaries on the paragraph. I give it, but am myself dissatisfied with it.

Line 2 is strong. 'The enemy' is the first line, which solicits 1. One, however, is able to resist the solicitation; and the whole paragraph gives a good auspice. The personal pronoun seems to show that the whole was, or was intended to be, understood as an oracular response in divination. This paragraph is rhymed, moreover, as are also 1, 3, and 4

'In the caldron is good fare, See my foe with angry glare; But touch me he does not dare.'

Line 3 is also strong, and in the proper place; and if its correlate were the divided 5, its auspice would be entirely good. But instead of 5, its correlate is the strong 6. The place of the ears at 5 has been changed. Things promise badly. The advance of 3 is stopped. The good meat in the caldron which it symbolises will not be eaten. But 3 keeping firm 5 will by and by seek its society! The yin and the yang will mingle, and their union will be followed by genial rain. The issue will he good.

Line 4 is in the place of a great minister, who is charged with the most difficult duties, which no single man can sustain. Then the strength of 4 is weakened by being in an even place, and its correlate is the weak 1 in the lowest place. Its subject is insufficient of p. 173 himself for his work, and he has no sufficient help; and the result will be evil.

'Paragraph 5,' says the Daily Lecture, 'praises the ruler as condescending to the worthy with his humble virtue.' 'Yellow' has occurred repeatedly as 'a correct colour;' and here 'the yellow ears and strong rings of metal' are intended to intensify our appreciation of the occupant of 5. As the line is divided, a caution is added about being firm and correct.

Line 6 is strong, but the strength is tempered by its being in an even place. It is this which makes the handle to be of jade, which, though very hard, is supposed to have a peculiar and rich softness of its own. The auspice of the line is very good. 'The great minister,' it is said, 'the subject of 6,' performs for the ruler, the subject of 5, in helping his government and nourishing the worthy, the part which the handle does for the caldron.

THE KĂN HEXAGRAM

Kăn gives the intimation of ease and development. When (the time of) movement (which it indicates) comes, (the subject of the hexagram) will be found looking out with apprehension, and yet

p. 173

smiling and talking cheerfully. When the movement (like a crash of thunder) terrifies all within a hundred lî, he will be (like the sincere worshipper) who is not (startled into) letting go his ladle and (cup of) sacrificial spirits.

p. 174

Footnotes

174:LI Kăn among the trigrams represents thunder, and, according to Wăn's arrangement and significance of them, 'the oldest son.' It is a phonetic character in which the significant constituent is Yü, meaning rain, and with which are formed most characters that denote atmospherical phenomena. The hexagram is formed of the trigram Kăn redoubled, and may be taken as representing the crash or peal of thunder; but we have seen that the attribute or virtue of the trigram is 'moving, exciting power;' and thence, symbolically, the character is indicative of movement taking place in society or in the kingdom. This is the meaning of the hexagram; and the subject is the conduct to be pursued in a time of movement--such as insurrection or revolution--by the party promoting, and most interested in, the situation. It is shown how he ought to be aware of the dangers of the time, and how by precaution and the regulation of himself he may overcome them.

The indication of a successful issue given by the figure is supposed to be given by the undivided line at the bottom of the trigram. The subject of it must be superior to the subjects of the two divided lines above. It is in the idea of the hexagram that he should be moving and advancing;--and what can his movement be but successful?

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The next sentence shows him sensible of the danger of the occasion, but confident and self-possessed. The concluding sentence shows him rapt in his own important affairs, like a sincere worshipper, thinking only of the service in which he is engaged. Such a symbol is said to be suggested by Wăn's significance of Kăn as 'the oldest son (page 33).' It is his to succeed to his father, and the hexagram, as following Ting, shows him presiding over the sacrifices that have been prepared in the caldron. This is too fanciful.

What is said on line 1 is little more than a repetition of the principal part of the Thwan. The line is undivided, and gives the auspice of good fortune.

'The position of peril' to the subject of line 2 is suggested, as Appendix II says, by its position, immediately above 1. But the rest of the symbolism is obscure, and Kû Hsî says he does not understand it. The common interpretation appears in the version. The subject of the line does what he can to get out of danger; and finally, as is signified by the central position of the line, the issue is better than could have been expected. On the specification of 'seven days,' see what is said in the treatise on the Thwan of hexagram 24. On its use here Khăng-žze says:--'The places of a diagram amount to 6. The number 7 is the first of another. When the movement symbolised by Kăn is gone by, things will be as they were before.'

Line 3 is divided, and where an undivided line should be; but if its subject move on to the fourth place, which would be right for him, the issue will not be bad.

The 4th line, however, has a bad auspice of its own. It is undivided in an even place, and it is pressed by the divided line on p. 176 either side, hence its subject is represented as supinely sinking in the mud.

Line 5 is divided, in an odd place, and that in which the action of the hexagram may be supposed to be concentrated. Hence its subject is always in peril; but his central position indicates safety in the end.

Line 6 is weak, and has to abide the concluding terrors of the movement. Action on the part of its subject is sure to be evil. If, however, he were to take precautions, he might escape with only the censures of his relatives. But I do not see anything in the figure to indicate this final symbolism. The writer, probably, had a case in his mind, which it suited; but what that was we do not know.

THE KĂN HEXAGRAM

When one's resting is like that of the back, and he loses all consciousness of self; when he walks

p. 176

in his courtyard, and does not see any (of the persons) in it,--there will be no error.

S. The fifth SIX, divided, shows its subject keeping his jawbones at rest, so that his words are (all) orderly. Occasion for repentance will disappear.

p. 177

devotedly maintaining his restfulness. There will be good fortune.

Footnotes

177:LII The trigram Kăn represents a mountain. Mountains rise up grandly from the surface of the earth, and their masses rest on it in quiet and solemn majesty; and they serve also to arrest the onward progress of the traveller. Hence the attribute ascribed to Kăn is twofold; it is both active and passive-resting and arresting. The character is used in this hexagram with both of those significations. As the name of the figure, it denotes the mental characteristic of resting in what is right; especially resting, as it is expressed by Chinese critics, 'in principle,'--that which is light, on the widest scale, and in the absolute conception of the mind; and that which is right in every different position in which a man can be placed. We find this treated of in the Great Learning (Commentary, chapter 3), and in the Doctrine of the Mean, chapter 14, and other places. This is the theme of the hexagram; and the symbolism of it is all taken from different parts of the human body, as in hexagram 31, and the way in which they are dealt with. Several of the paragraphs are certainly not easy to translate and interpret.

The other parts of the body, such as the mouth, eyes, and ears, have their appetencies, which lead them to what is without themselves. The back alone has nothing to do with anything beyond itself-hardly with itself even; all that it has to do is to stand straight and strong. So should it be with, us, resting in principle, free from the intrusion of selfish though s and external objects. Amidst society, he who realises the idea of the hexagram is still alone, and does not allow himself to be distracted from the contemplation and following of principle. He is not a recluse, however, who keeps aloof from social life; but his distinction is that he maintains a supreme regard to principle, when alone, and when mingling with others.

In the symbolism the author rises from one part of the body to the other. The first line at the bottom of the figure fitly suggests 'the toes.' The lesson is that from the first men should rest in, and be anxious to do, what is right in all their affairs. The weakness of the line and its being in an odd place give occasion for the caution, with which the paragraph concludes.

Above the toes are the calves, represented by the second line, weak, but in its proper place. Above this, again, are the loins, represented by 3, strong, and in danger of being violent. Line 2 p. 178 follows 3, and should help it; but is unable to do so; and there results dissatisfaction.

When the calves are kept at rest, advance is stopped, but no other harm ensues. Not so when the loins are kept at rest, and unable to bend, for the connexion between the upper and lower parts of the body is then broken. The dissatisfaction increases to an angry heat. Paragraph 3 is unusually difficult. For 'loins' P. Regis has scapulae, and for ribs renes; Canon McClatchie says:--'Third Nine is stopping at a limit, and separating what is in continued succession (i. e. the backbone); thus the mind,' &c.

Line 4 is a weak line resting in a proper place; hence it gives a good auspice. The Khang-hsî editors, however, call attention to the resting of the trunk as being inferior to the resting of the back in the Thwan.

The place of the weak fifth line is not proper for it; and this accounts for the mention of its subject 'repenting,' for which, however, there is not occasion.

The third line of the trigrams, and the sixth of the hexagram, is what makes Kăn what it is,--the symbol of a mountain. The subject of it therefore will carry out the resting required by the whole figure in the highest style.

THE KIEN HEXAGRAM

Kien suggests to us the marriage of a young lady, and the good fortune (attending it). There will be advantage in being firm and correct.

p. 179

Footnotes

179:LIII Kien is ordinarily used in the sense of gradually; but there is connected with that the idea also of progress or advance. The element of meaning in the character is the symbol of water; and the whole of it denotes gradual advance, like the soaking in of water. Three hexagrams contain in them the idea of advance, Žin (35), Shăng (46), and this Kien; but each has its peculiarity of meaning, and that of Kien is the gradual manner in which the advance takes place. The subject then of the hexagram is the advance of men to offices in the state, how it should take place gradually and by successive steps, as well as on certain other p. 180 conditions that may be gathered from the Text. P. Regis gives this exposition of the subject, as taken by him from the symbolism, which he ascribes to Confucius:--'Viri probi, seu republica digni, in virtutis soliditate instituendi sunt a sapiente, bonisque regulis ut altis radicibus firmandi, nec alii ad rempublicam tractandam promovendi, nisi qui paulatim per varios minoresque gradus ad magnum hoc regimen periculo facto ascendere digni sint.' He then illustrates this sentiment by the words of Pliny:--'Eligetur multis experimentis eruditus, et qui futura possit ex praeteritis praevidere.'

But how does the lineal figure give the idea of a gradual advance? We shall see how it is attempted in the Great Symbolism to get this from the component trigrams. The account there is not satisfactory; and still less so is what else I have been able to find on the subject. E. g., the trigrams were originally Khwăn and Khien; but the third line of Khwăn and the first of Khien have changed places; and the trigrams now denote 'the youngest son,' and 'the eldest daughter.' If all this, which is a mere farrago, were admitted, it would not help us to the idea of an advance.

Again, the lines 2, 3, 4, 5 are all in the places proper to them as strong or weak; we ascend by them as by regular steps to the top of the hexagram; and this, it is said, gives the notion of the gradual steps of the advance. But neither does this carry conviction with it to the mind. We must leave the question. King Wăn, for reasons which we cannot discover, or without such reasons, determined that the hexagram Kien should denote the gradual advance of men to positions of influence and office.

The marriage of a young lady is mentioned in the Thwan as an illustration of an important event taking place with various p. 181 preliminary steps, continued from its initiation to its consummation. But all must he done in an orderly and correct manner. And so must it be with the rise of a man in the service of the state.

The goose from the most ancient times played an important part in the marriage ceremonies of the Chinese; and this may have suggested the use of it in the symbolism of the different lines. Its habits as a bird of passage, and flying in processional order, admirably suited the writer's purpose. In paragraph 1 it appears for the first time in the season approaching the shore. Then comes the real subject of the line; and the facts of its being weak, and without a proper correlate, agree with, if they do not suggest, what is said about him, and the caution added.

The geese have advanced in line 2, and so has the officer, though he is not mentioned. The line is weak or humble, and central, and has a proper correlate in 5. Hence comes the good auspice.

Line 3 is strong, and has passed the central place, to the top of the lower trigram, and has not a proper correlate in 6. Its subject is likely to be violent and at the same time unsuccessful in his movements. He is like a husband who does not care for his wife, or a wife who does not care for her child. But in the case supposed, his strength in the end would be useful.

The web-footed goose is not suited for taking hold on the branches; but on flat branches it can rest. Line 4, weak, but in an even place, does not promise a good auspice for its subject; but it is the first line in the trigram of humility, and it is concluded that he will not fall into error.

Line 5 is a strong line in the ruler's seat; and yet it appears here as the symbol of a wife. Somehow its subject has been at variance with, and kept in disgrace by, calumniating enemies such as the plunderers of paragraph 3; but things come right in the end. The wife, childless for three years, becomes at last a mother; and there is good fortune.

The subject of line 6 has reached the top of the hexagram. There is no more advance for him; and he has no correlate. But he may still do some good work for the state, and verify the auspice derived from the ornamental plumes of the geese.

THE KWEI MEI HEXAGRAM

Kwei Mei indicates that (under the conditions which it denotes) action will be evil, and in no wise advantageous.

p. 181

p. 182

one leg who yet manages to tramp along. Going forward will be fortunate.

Footnotes

182:LIV Mei Kwei is a common way of saying that a young lady is married, or, literally, 'is going home.' If the order of the characters be reversed, the verb kwei will be transitive, and the phrase will signify 'the marrying away of a daughter,' or 'the giving the young lady in marriage.' In the name of this hexagram, Kwei is used with this transitive force. But Mei means 'a younger sister,' and not merely a young lady or a daughter. Kwei Mei might be equivalent to our 'giving in marriage;' but we shall find p. 183 that the special term has a special appropriateness. The Thwan makes the hexagram give a bad auspice concerning its subject; and for this the following reasons are given:--According to Win's symbolism of the trigrams, Tui, the lower trigram here, denotes the youngest daughter, and Kăn, the upper trigram, the oldest son. And as the action of the hexagram begins with that of the lower trigram, we have in the figure two violations of propriety. First, the marriage represented is initiated by the lady and her friends. She goes to her future home instead of the bridegroom coming to fetch her. Second, the parties are unequally matched. There ought not to be such disparity of age between them. Another reason assigned for the bad auspice is that lines 2, 3, 4, and 5 are all in places not suited to them, quite different from the corresponding lines in the preceding hexagram.

Is then such a marriage as the above, or marriage in general, the theme of the hexagram? I think not. The marriage comes in, as in the preceding essay, by way of illustration. With all the abuses belonging to it as an institution of his country, as will immediately appear, the writer acknowledged it without saying a word in deprecation or correction of those abuses; but from the case he selected he wanted to set forth some principles which should obtain in the relation between a ruler and his ministers. This view is insisted on in Wan King's 'New Collection of Comments on the Yî (A. D. 1686).'

A feudal prince was said to marry nine ladies at once. The principal of them was the bride who was to be the proper wife, and she was attended by two others, virgins from her father's harem; a cousin, and a half-sister, a daughter of her father by another mother of inferior rank. Under line 1 the younger sister p. 183 of the hexagram appears in the inferior position of this half-sister. But the line is strong, indicative in a female of firm virtue. The mean condition and its duties are to be deplored, and give the auspice of lameness; but notwithstanding, the secondary wife will in a measure discharge her service. There will be good fortune. Notwithstanding apparent disadvantages, an able officer may do his ruler good service.

Line 2 is strong, and in the centre. The proper correlate is 5, which, however, is weak, and in the place of a strong line. With such a correlate, the able lady in 2 cannot do much in the discharge of her proper work. But if she think only of her husband, like the widow who will die rather than marry again, such devotion will have its effect and its reward. Though blind of one eye, she yet manages to see. And so devoted loyalty in an officer will compensate for many disadvantages.

Line 3 is weak, where it should be strong; and the attribute of pleased satisfaction belonging to Tui culminates in its subject. She turns out to be of so mean a character and such a slave of passion that no one will marry her. She returns and accepts the position of a concubine.

Line 4 is strong, where it should be weak; but in the case of a female the indication is not bad. The subject of the line, however, is in no haste. She waits, and the good time will come.

King Tî-yî has been already mentioned under the fifth line of hexagram 11, and in connexion with some regulation which he made about the marriage of daughters of the royal house. His sister here is honourably mentioned, so as to suggest that the adorning which she preferred was 'the ornament of the hidden man of the heart.' The comparison of her to 'the moon almost full' I am ready to hail as an instance where the duke of Kâu is for once poetical. Khăng-žze, however, did not see poetry, but a symbol in it. 'The moon is not full,' he says, 'but only nearly full. A wife ought not to eclipse her husband!' However, the sister of Tî-yî gets happily married, as she deserved to do, being represented by the line in the place of honour, having its proper correlate in 2.

Line 6 is weak, at the top of the hexagram, and without a proper correlate. Hence its auspice is evil. The marriage-contract is broken, according to Kû Hsî, and does not take effect. The p. 185 parties mentioned in the paragraph appear engaged in the temple, offering or sacrificing to the spirits of their ancestors. But the woman's basket which should contain her offerings (The Shih, I, ii, ode 4) is empty, and the man attempts to perform his part in slaying the victim (The Shih, II, vi, ode 6. 5) without effect.

THE FĂNG HEXAGRAM

Făng intimates progress and development. When a king has reached the point (which the name denotes)

p. 184

there is no occasion to be anxious (through fear of a change). Let him be as the sun at noon.

p. 185

p. 186

with his house made large, but only serving as a screen to his household. When he looks at his door, it is still, and there is nobody about it. For three years no one is to be seen. There will be evil.

Footnotes

186:LV The character Făng is the symbol of being large and abundant, and, as the name of this hexagram, denotes a condition of abundant prosperity. In the changes of human affairs a condition of prosperity has often given place to one of an opposite character. The lesson of the hexagram is to show to rulers how they may preserve the prosperity of their state and people. The component trigrams have the attributes of intelligence and of motive force, and the second is under the direction of the first. A ruler with these attributes is not likely to fail in maintaining his crown and prosperity, and it may well be said that the figure intimates progress and development. The king is told not to be anxious, but to study how he may always be like the sun in his meridian height, cheering and enlightening all.

The explanation of the Thwan is thus natural and easy. It will be found that a change is introduced in explaining the symbolism of the lines, which it is as well to point out here. Thus far we have found that to constitute a proper correlation between two lines, one of them must be whole, and the other divided. Here two undivided lines make a correlation. The law, evidently made for the occasion, goes far to upset altogether the doctrine of correlated lines. I have been surprised that the rules about the lines stated in the Introduction, pp. 15, 16, have held good so often. There have been various deviations from them, but none so gross as that in this hexagram.

Line 1 is strong, and in an odd place. Its correlate is 4, which would in other figures be deemed unfortunate. But here even the Text calls 4 (for the reference must be to it) the mate of 1, and makes their belonging to different categories of no account. The lesson taught is that mutual helpfulness is the great instrument for the maintenance of prosperity. The subject of line 1 is encouraged to go forward.

Line 2 is divided, and in its proper place. Occupying the centre of the trigram of brightness, the intelligence of it should be concentrated in its subject; but his correlate is the weak 5, weak and in an improper place, so that he becomes the benighted ruler, and darkness is shed from him down on 2, which is strangely symbolised. p. 187 The subject of 2 therefore, if he advance, will not be acceptable to his ruler, and will not be employed. The only way in which he. can be useful by developing the light that is in him is pointed out in the conclusion. The constellation of the Bushel corresponds to our Ursa Major, or perhaps part of Sagittarius.

Line 3 is strong, in its proper place. It is the last line moreover of the trigram of Brightness. All these conditions are favourable to the employment of its subject; but its correlate is the weak 6, which is at the extremity of the trigram of movement. There is no more power therefore in 6, and the subject of 3 has no one to co-operate with him. His symbolism and auspice are worse than those of 2; but his own proper goodness and capacity will save him from error. Mei is a small star in or near the Bushel.

The symbolism of line 4 is the same as that of 2, till we come to the last sentence. Then there is the strange correlation of the two strong lines in 4 and 1; and the issue is good.

The subject of line 5 is in the ruler's place, himself weak, but 'the lord' of the trigram of movement. He can do little unhelped, but if he can bring into the work and employ in his service the talents of 1, 3, and 4, and even of 2, his correlate, the results will be admirable. Nothing consolidates the prosperity of a country so much as the co-operation of the ruler and able ministers.

All the conditions of line 6 are unfavourable, and its subject is left to himself without any helpers. He is isolated for long, and undone. The issue is only evil.

THE LÜ HEXAGRAM

Lü intimates that (in the condition which it denotes) there may be some little attainment and progress. If the stranger or traveller be firm and correct as he ought to be, there will be good fortune.

p. 188

Footnotes

188:LVI The name Lü denotes people travelling abroad, and is often translated by 'strangers.' As early as the time of king Wăn, there was a class of men who went about from one state to another, pursuing their business as pedlars or travelling merchants; but in Mencius II, i, chap. 5. 3, it is used for travellers generally, whatever it was that took them out of their own states. Confucius himself is adduced as a travelling stranger; and in this hexagram king Wăn is supposed to have addressed himself to the class of such men, and told them how they ought to comport themselves. They ought to cultivate two qualities,--those of humility and integrity (firm correctness). By means of these they would escape harm, and would make some little attainment and progress. Their rank was too low to speak of great things in connexion with them. It is interesting to find travellers, strangers in a strange land, having thus a place in the Yî.

For the manner in which the component trigrams are supposed p. 189 to give the idea that is in Lü, see Appendix II. In Appendix I there is an endeavour to explain the Thwan by means of the lines and their relation to one another.

Line 1 is weak, in an odd place, and at the very bottom or commencement of the hexagram, These conditions are supposed to account for the unfavourable symbolism and auspice.

Line 2 is weak, but in its proper place. That place, moreover, is the central. Hence the traveller--and he might here very well be a travelling merchant--is represented in the symbolism as provided with everything he can require; and though the auspice is not mentioned, we must understand it as being good.

Line 3 is strong, and in an even place. But it occupies the topmost place in the lower trigram; and its strength may be expected to appear as violence. So it does in the symbolism, and extraordinary violence as well. It seems unreasonable to suppose, as in the conclusion, that one so described could be in any way correct. The Khang-hsî editors remark that the subjects of 2 and 3 are represented as having 'lodging-houses,' and not any of those of the other lines, because these are the only two lines in the places proper to them!

Line 4 is strong, but in an even place. Hence its subject has not a lodging-house;' but has found a situation where he has shelter, though he is exposed to perils. Hence he is represented as having an axe, which may be available for defence. Still he is not at peace in his mind. The Khang-hsî editors observe well that the mention of an axe makes us think of caution as a quality desirable in a traveller.

Line 5, though weak, is in the centre of the upper trigram, which p. 190 has the quality of brightness and elegance. It is held to be the lord of the trigram Lî; and lines 4 and 6 are on either side in loyal duty to defend and help. Then the shooting a pheasant is supposed to be suggested; an elegant bird,--by the trigram of elegance. When an officer was travelling abroad in ancient times, his gift of introduction at any feudal court was a pheasant. The traveller here emblemed is praised by his attached friends, and exalted to a place of dignity by the ruler to whom he is acceptable. It will be seen how the idea of the fifth line being the ruler's seat is dropt here as being alien from the idea of the hexagram, so arbitrary is the interpretation of the symbolism.

Line 6 is strong, in an even place, at the extremity of Lî and of the whole hexagram. Its subject will be arrogant and violent; the opposite of what a traveller should be; and the issue will be evil. The symbolism must be allowed to be extravagant. What bird ever burned its nest? And the character for 'ox' is strangely used for 'ox-like docility.'

THE SUN HEXAGRAM

Sun intimates that (under the conditions which it denotes) there will be some little attainment and progress. There will be advantage in movement

p. 190

onward in whatever direction. It will be advantageous (also) to see the great man.

p. 191

subject). All occasion for repentance will disappear, and all his movements will be advantageous. There may have been no (good) beginning, but there will be a (good) end. Three days before making any changes, (let him give notice of them); and three days after, (let him reconsider them). There will (thus) be good fortune.

Footnotes

191:LVII With Sun as the fifth of the Fû-hsî trigrams we have become familiar. It symbolises both wind and wood; and has the attributes of flexibility (nearly allied to docility) and penetration. In this hexagram we are to think of it as representing wind with its penetrating power, finding its way into every corner and cranny.

Confucius once said (Analects 12. 19):--'The relation between superiors and inferiors is like that between the wind and the grass. The grass must bend when the wind blows upon it.' In accordance with this, the subject of the hexagram must be understood as the influence and orders of government designed to remedy what is wrong in the people. The 'Daily Lecture' says that the upper trigram denotes the orders issuing from the ruler, and the lower the obedience rendered to them by the people; but this view is hardly borne out by the Text.

But how is it that the figure represents merely 'some little attainment?' This is generally explained by taking the first line of the trigram as indicating what the subject of it can do. But over the weak first line are two strong lines, so that its subject can accomplish but little. The Khang-hsî editors, rejecting this view, contend that, the idea of the whole figure being penetration, line 1, the symbol of weakness and what is bad, will not be able to offer much resistance to the subjects of the other lines, which will enter and dispel its influence. They illustrate this from processes of nature, education, and politics; the effect they say is described as small, because the process is not to revolutionise or renew, but only to p. 192 correct and improve. Such as it is, however, it requires the operation of the strong and virtuous, 'the great man.' Even all this criticism is not entirely satisfactory.

Line 1 is weak, where it should be strong. The movements of its subject are expressive of perplexity. He wants vigour and decision.

Line 2 is strong, and in the right place, and has a good auspice. Things are placed or hidden beneath a couch or bed; and the subject of the line appears as searching for them. He calls in divination to assist his judgment, and exorcists to expel for him what is bad. The work is great and difficult, so that he appears almost distracted by it; but the issue is good. For this successful explanation of the line, I am indebted to the Khang-hsî editors. The writer of the Text believed of course in divination and exorcism; which was his misfortune rather than his fault or folly.

Line 3 is in the right place for a strong line. But its position at the top of the lower trigram is supposed to indicate the restlessness, and here the vehemence, of its subject. And 6 is no proper correlate. All the striving is ineffective, and there is occasion for regret.

Line 4 is weak, as is its correlate in 1. But 4 is a proper place for a weak line, and it rests under the shadow of the strong and central 5. Hence the omens of evil are counteracted; and a good auspice is obtained. The game caught in hunting was divided into three portions:--the first for use in sacrifices; the second for the entertainment of visitors; and the third for the kitchen generally. A hunt which yielded enough for all these purposes was deemed very successful.

On line 5 Khăng-žze says:--'It is the seat of honour, and the p. 193 place for the lord of Sun, from whom there issue all charges and commands. It is central and correct; we must find in its subject the qualities denoted by Sun in their greatest excellence. But those qualities are docility and accordance with what is right; and the advantage of firm correctness is insisted on. With this all will be right.' With the concluding sentence compare the conclusion of the Thwan of hexagram 18.

The evil that paragraph 6 concludes with would arise from the quality of Sun being carried to excess. I have followed the Khang-hsî editors in adopting a change of one character in the received Text.

THE TUI HEXAGRAM

Tui intimates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and attainment. (But) it will be advantageous to be firm and correct.

p. 193

Footnotes

193:LVIII The trigram Tui symbolises water as collected in a marsh or lake; and its attribute or virtus is pleasure or complacent satisfaction. It is a matter of some difficulty to determine in one's mind how this attribute came to be connected with the trigram. The Khang-hsî editors say:--'When the airs of spring begin to blow, from the collections of water on the earth the moistening vapours rise up (and descend again); so, when the breath of health is vigorous in a man's person, the hue of it is p. 194 displayed in his complexion. Akin to this is the significance of the hexagram Tui representing a marsh, as denoting pleasure. Although the yin lines give it its special character they owe their power and effect to the yang; so when the qualities of mildness and harmony prevail in a man, without true-heartedness and integrity to control and direct them, they will fail to be correct, and may degenerate into what is evil. Hence it is said that it will be advantageous to be firm and correct!'

The feeling then of pleasure is the subject of this hexagram. The above quotation sufficiently explains the concluding characters of the Thwan; but where is the intimation in Tui of progress and attainments? It is supposed to be in the one weak line surmounting each trigram and supported by the two strong lines. Fancy sees in that mildness and benignity energised by a double portion of strength.

Line 1, strong in the place of strength, with no proper correlate above, is thus confined to itself. But its subject is sufficient for himself. There will be good fortune.

Line 2, by the rule of place, should be weak, but it is strong. Without any proper correlate, and contiguous to the weak 3, the subject of it might be injuriously affected, and there would be cause for repentance. But the sincerity natural in his central position counteracts all this.

The view of the third paragraph that appears in the translation is derived from the Khang-hsî editors. The evil threatened in it would be a consequence of the excessive devotion of its subject to pleasure.

'The bordering on what is injurious' in paragraph 4 has reference to the contiguity of line 4 to the weak 3. That might have p. 195 an injurious effect; but the subject of 4 reflects and deliberates before he will yield to the seduction of pleasure, and there is cause for joy.

The danger to the subject of line 5 is from the weak 6 above, in whom he is represented as 'trusting.' Possibly his own strength and sincerity of mind may be perverted into instruments of evil; but possibly, they may operate beneficially.

The symbolism of paragraph 6 is akin to that of 3, though no positive auspice is expressed. The subject of line 3 attracts others round itself for the sake of pleasure; the subject of this leads them to follow himself in quest of it.

THE HWÂN HEXAGRAM

Hwân intimates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and success. The king goes to his ancestral temple; and it will be advantageous to

p. 195

cross the great stream. It will be advantageous to be firm and correct.

p. 196

[paragraph continues] He scatters abroad (also) the accumulations in the royal granaries. There will be no error.

Footnotes

196:LIX Hwân, the name of this hexagram, denotes a state of dissipation or dispersion. It is descriptive primarily of men's minds alienated from what is right and good. This alienation is sure to go on to disorder in the commonwealth; and an attempt is made to show how it should be dealt with and remedied.

The figure is made up of one of the trigrams for water and over it that for wind. Wind moving over water seems to disperse it, and awakes naturally in the beholder the idea of dissipation.

The intimation of progress and success is supposed to be given by the strong lines occupying the central places. The king goes to the ancestral temple, there to meet with the spirits of his ancestors. His filial piety moves them by the sincerity of its manifestation. Those spirits come and are present. Let filial piety--in our language, let sincere religion--rule in men's minds, and there will be no alienation in them from what is right and good or from one another. And if the state of the country demand a great or hazardous enterprise, let it be undertaken. But whatever is done, must be done with due attention to what is right, firmly and correctly.

Line 1, at the commencement of the hexagram, tells us that the evil has not yet made great progress, and that dealing with it will be easy. But the subject of the line is weak, and in an odd place. He cannot cope with the evil himself. He must have help, and he finds that in a strong horse, which description is understood to be symbolical of the subject of the strong second line.

'Line 2 is strong, but in an even place. That place is, indeed, the central, but the attribute of the lower trigram Khan is peril. These conditions indicate evil, and action will be dangerous; but the subject of 2 looks to 1 below him, and takes shelter in union with its subject. Since the commentary of Khăng-žze, this has been the interpretation of the line.

Line 3 is weak, and in an odd place. A regard for himself that would unfit its subject for contributing any service to the work of p. 197 the hexagram might be feared; but he discards that regard, and will do nothing to be repented of. There is a change of style in the Chinese text at this point. As Wang Shăn-žze (Yüan dynasty) says:--'Here and henceforth the scattering is of what should be scattered, that what should not be scattered may be collected.'

Line 4, though weak, is in its correct place, and adjoins the strong 5, which is in the ruler's seat. The subject of 4, therefore, will fitly represent the minister, to whom it belongs to do a great part in remedying the evil of dispersion. And this he does. He brings dissentient partizanship to an end; and not satisfied with that, he collects multitudes of those who had been divided into a great body so that they stand out conspicuous like a hill.

Line 5 gives us the action of the ruler himself;--by his proclamations, and by his benevolence. Kû Hsî and other critics enlarge on the symbolism of the perspiration, which they think much to the point. P. Regis avoids it, translating--'Ille, magnas leges dissipans, facit ut penetrent(ur?).' Canon McClatchie has an ingenious and original, so far as my Chinese reading goes, note upon it:--'As sweat cures fevers, so do proclamations cure rebellions.' Both of these translators miss the meaning of the other instance of the king's work.

Line 6 is occupied by a strong line, which has a proper correlate in 3; but 3 is at the top of the trigram of peril. The subject of 6 hurries away from association with the subject of it, but does so in the spirit of the hexagram, so that there is no error or blame attaching to him.

THE KIEH HEXAGRAM

Kieh intimates that (under its conditions) there will be progress and attainment. (But) if the regulations (which it prescribes) be severe and difficult, they cannot be permanent.

p. 198

quitting the courtyard outside his door. There will be no error.

3. . The third SIX, divided, shows its subject with no appearance of observing the (proper) regulations, in which case we shall see him lamenting. But there will be no one to blame (but himself).

Footnotes

198:LX The primary application of the character Kieh was to denote the joints of the bamboo; it is used also for the joints of the human frame; and for the solar and other terms of the year. Whatever makes regular division may be denominated a Kieh; there enter into it the ideas of regulating and restraining; and the subject of this hexagram is the regulations of government enacted for the guidance and control of the people. How the constituent trigrams are supposed to suggest or indicate this meaning will be seen in Appendix II.

Kû Hsî anticipates that symbolism in trying to account for the statement that the figure gives the promise of success and attainment; but the ground of this is generally made out by referring to the equal division of the undivided and divided lines and our having in 2 and 5, the central places, two undivided lines. An p. 199 important point concerning 'regulations' is brought out in the conclusion of the Thwan,--that they must be adapted to circumstances, and not made too strict and severe.

Line 1 is strong, and in its correct place. Its subject therefore would not be wanting in power to make his way. But he is supposed to be kept in check by the strong 2, and the correlate 4 is the first line in the trigram of peril. The course of wisdom therefore is to keep still. The character here rendered door is that belonging to the inner apartments, leading from the hall into which entrance is found by the outer gate, mentioned under line 2. The courtyard outside the door and that inside the gate is one and the same. The 'Daily Lecture' says that the paragraph tells an officer not to take office rashly, but to exercise a cautious judgment in his measures.

Line 2 is strong, in the wrong place; nor has it a proper correlate. Its subject keeps still, when he ought to be up and doing. There will be evil.

Line 3 should be strong, but it is weak. It is neither central nor correct. It has no proper correlate, and it is the topmost line in the trigram of complacent satisfaction. Its subject will not receive the yoke of regulations; and he will find out his mistake, when it is too late.

Line 4 is weak, as it ought to be, and its subject has respect to the authority of the strong ruler in 5. Hence its good symbolism and auspice.

Line 5 is strong, and in its correct place. Its subject regulates himself, having no correlate; but he is lord of the hexagram, and his influence is everywhere beneficially felt.

p. 200

Line 6 is weak, in its proper place. The subject of the topmost line must be supposed to possess an exaggerated desire for enacting regulations. They will be too severe, and the effect will be evil. But as Confucius (Analects 3. 3) says, that is not so great a fault as to be easy and remiss. It may be remedied, and cause for repentance will disappear.

THE KUNG FÛ HEXAGRAM

Kung Fû (moves even) pigs and fish, and leads to good fortune. There will be advantage in crossing

p. 200

the great stream. There will be advantage in being firm and correct.

I. The first NINE, undivided, shows its subject resting (in himself). There will be good fortune. If he sought to any other, he would not find rest.

Footnotes

200:LXI Kung Fû, the name of this hexagram, may be represented in English by 'Inmost Sincerity.' It denotes the highest quality of man, and gives its possessor power so that he prevails with spiritual beings, with other men, and with the lower creatures. It is the p. 201 subject of the 'Doctrine of the Mean' from the 21st chapter onwards, where Remusat rendered it by 'la perfection,' 'la perfection morale,' and Intorcetta and his coadjutors by 'vera solidaque perfectio.' The lineal figure has suggested to the Chinese commentators, from the author of the first Appendix, two ideas in it which deserve to be pointed out. There are two divided lines in the centre and two undivided below them and above them. The divided lines in the centre are held to represent the heart or mind free from all pre-occupation, without any consciousness of self; and the undivided lines, on each side of it, in the centre of the constituent trigrams are held to denote the solidity of the virtue of one so free from selfishness. There is no unreality in it, not a single flaw.

The 'Daily Lecture' at the conclusion of its paraphrase of the Thwan refers to the history of the ancient Shun, and the wonderful achievements of his virtue. The authors give no instance of the affecting, of 'pigs and fishes' by sincerity, and say that these names are symbolical of men, the rudest and most unsusceptible of being acted on. The Text says that the man thus gifted with sincerity will succeed in the most difficult enterprises. Remarkable is the concluding sentence that he must be firm and correct. Here, as elsewhere throughout the Yî, there comes out the practical character which has distinguished the Chinese people and their best teaching all along the line of history.

The translation of paragraph 1 is according to the view approved by the Khang-hsî editors. The ordinary view makes the other to whom the subject of line 1 looks or might look to be the subject of 4; but they contend that, excepting in the case of 3 and 6, the force of correlation should be discarded from the study of this p. 202 hexagram; for the virtue of sincerity is all centred in itself, thence derived and thereby powerful.

For paragraph 2, see Appendix III, Section i, 42. It is in rhyme, and I have there rendered it in rhyme. The 'young ones of the crane' are represented by line 1. In the third and fourth sentences we have the symbolism of two men brought together by their sympathy in virtue. The subject of the paragraph is the effect of sincerity.

The 'mate' of line 3 is 6. The principle of correlation comes in. Sincerity, not left to itself, is influenced from without, and hence come the changes and uncertainty in the state and moods of the subject of the line.

Line 4 is weak, and in its correct place. The subject of it has discarded the correlate in 1, and hastens on to the confidence of the ruler in 5, being symbolised as the moon nearly full. The other symbol of the horse whose fellow has disappeared has reference to the discarding of the subject of 1. Anciently chariots and carriages were drawn by four horses, two outsides and two insides. Lines 1 and 4 were a pair of these; but 1 disappears here from the team, and 4 goes on and joins 5.

Line 5 is strong and central, in the ruler's place. Its subject must be the sage on the throne, whose sincerity will go forth and bind all in union with himself.

Line 6 should be divided, but is undivided; and coming after 5, what can the subject of it do? His efforts will be ineffectual, and injurious to himself. He is symbolised by a cock--literally, 'the plumaged voice.' But a cock is not fitted to fly high, and in attempting to do so will only suffer hurt.

THE HSIÂO KWO HEXAGRAM

Hsiâo Kwo indicates that (in the circumstances which it implies) there will be progress and attainment.

p. 202

[paragraph continues] But it will be advantageous to be firm and correct. (What the name denotes) may be done in small affairs, but not in great affairs. (It is like) the notes that come down from a bird on the wing;--to descend is better than to ascend. There will (in this way) be great good fortune.

p. 203

grandmother; not attempting anything against his ruler, but meeting him as his minister. There will be no error.

Footnotes

203:LXII The name Hsiâo Kwo is explained both by reference to the lines of the hexagram, and to the meaning of the characters. The explanation from the lines appears immediately on comparing them with those of Tâ Kwo, the 28th hexagram. There the first and sixth lines are divided, and between are four undivided lines; here the third and fourth lines are undivided, and outside each of them are two divided lines. The undivided or yang lines are great, the divided or yin lines are called small. In Hsiâo Kwo the divided or small lines predominate. But this peculiar structure of the figure could be of no interest to the student, if it were not for the meaning of the name, which is 'small excesses' or 'exceeding in what is small.' The author, accepted by us as king Wăn, p. 204 had in his mind our distinction of essentials and non-essentials. Is it ever good to deviate from what is recognised as the established course of procedure? The reply is--never in the matter of right but in what is conventional and ceremonial--in what is nonessential--the deviation may be made, and will be productive of good. The form may be given up, but not the substance. But the thing must be done very carefully,--humbly and reverently, and in small matters.

The symbolism of the bird is rather obscure. The whole of it is intended to teach humility. It is better for the bird to descend, keeping near to where it can perch and rest, than to hold on ascending into the homeless regions of the air.

Line 1 is weak, in an odd place, and possessed by the 'idea of exceeding,' which belongs to the hexagram. Its correlate is the strong 4, belonging to the trigram Kăn, the attribute of which is movement. There is nothing to repress the tendency of i; rather it is stimulated; and hence the symbolism.

Line 2 is weak, but in its proper place, and in the centre. Its correlate is 5, which is also a weak line. The lines 3 and 4 between them are both strong; and are supposed to represent the father and grandfather of the subject of 2; but he or she goes past them, and meets with the grandmother in 5. Again, 5 is the ruler's seat. The subject of 2 moves on to him, but not as an enemy; but humbly and loyally, as his minister according to the attributes of a weak line in the central place. It must be allowed that this view of the symbolism and its interpretation is obscure and strained.

The subject of line 3 is too confident in his own strength, and too defiant of the weak and small enemies that seek his hurt. p. 205 Line 4 is also strong, but the exercise of his strength by its subject is tempered by the position in an even place. He is warned, however, to continue quiet and restrain himself.

Line 5, though in the ruler's seat, is weak, and incapable of doing anything great. Its subject is called king or duke because of the ruler's seat; and the one whom in the concluding sentence he is said to capture is supposed to be the subject of 2.

The first part of the symbolism is the same as that of the Thwan under hexagram 9, q.v. I said there that it probably gave a testimony of the merit of the house of Kâu, as deserving the throne rather than the kings of Shang. That was because the Thwan contained the sentiments of Wăn, while he was yet only lord of Kâu. But the symbolism here was the work of the duke of Kâu, after his brother king Wû had obtained the throne. How did the symbolism then occur to him? May we not conclude that at least the hsiang of this hexagram was written during the troubled period of his regency, after the accession of Wû's son, king Khăng?

The Khang-hsî editors find in the concluding symbolism an incentive to humility:--'The duke, leaving birds on the wing, is content to use his arrows against those in a cave!' Line 6 is weak, and is at the top of the trigram of movement. He is possessed by the idea of the hexagram in an extreme degree, and is incapable of keeping himself under restraint.

THE KÎ ŽÎ HEXAGRAM

Kî Žî intimates progress and success in small matters. There will be advantage in being firm

p. 205

and correct. There has been good fortune in the beginning; there may be disorder in the end.

p. 206

Footnotes

206:LXIII The character called Kî is used as a symbol of being past or completed. Žî denotes primarily crossing a stream, and has the secondary meaning of helping and completing. The two characters, combined, will express the successful accomplishment of whatever the writer has in his mind. In dealing with this lineal figure, king Wăn was thinking of the condition of the kingdom, at length at rest and quiet. The vessel of the state has been brought safely across the great and dangerous stream. The distresses of the kingdom have been relieved, and its disorders have been repressed. Does anything remain to be done still? Yes, in small things. The new government has to be consolidated. Its ruler must, without noise or clamour, go on to perfect what has been wrought, with firmness and correctness, and ever keeping in mind the instability of all human affairs. That every line of the hexagram is in its correct place, and has its proper correlate is also supposed to harmonize with the intimation of progress and success.

Line 1, the first of the hexagram, represents the time immediately after the successful achievement of the enterprise it denotes;--the time for resting and being quiet. For a season, at least, all movement should be hushed. Hence we have the symbolism of a driver trying to stop his carriage, and a fox who has wet his tail, and will not tempt the stream again.

Line 2 is weak, and in its proper place. It also has the strong correlate 5; and might be expected to be forward to act. But it occupies its correct and central place, and suggests the symbol of a lady whose carriage has lost its screen. She will not advance p. 207 further so soon after success has been achieved; but keep herself hidden and retired. Let her not try to find the screen. When it is said that she will find this 'after seven days,' the meaning seems to be simply this, that the period of Kî Žî will then have been exhausted, the six lines having been gone through, and a new period, when action will be proper, shall have commenced.

The strong line 3, at the top of the lower trigram, suggests for its subject one undertaking a vigorous enterprise. The writer thinks of Kâo Žung, the sacrificial title of Wû Ting, one of the ablest sovereigns of the Shang dynasty (B. C. 1364-1324), who undertook an expedition against the barbarous hordes of the cold and bleak regions north of the Middle States. He is mentioned again under the next hexagram. He appears also in the Shû, IV, ix, and in the Shih, IV, iii, ode 5. His enterprise may have been good, and successful, but it was tedious, and the paragraph concludes with a caution.

Line 4 is weak, and has advanced into the trigram. for water. Its subject will be cautious, and prepare for evil, as in the symbolism, suggested probably by the nature of the trigram.

'The neighbour in the East' is the subject of line 5, and 'the neighbour in the West' is the subject of the correlate 2, the former quarter being yang and the latter yin. Line 5 is strong, and 2 is weak; but weakness is more likely to be patient and cautious than strength. They are compared to two men sacrificing. The one presents valuable offerings; the other very poor ones. But the p. 208 second excels in sincerity, and his small offering is the more acceptable.

The topmost line is weak, and on the outmost edge of Khân, the trigram, of peril. His action is violent and perilous, like that one attempting to cross a ford, and being plunged overhead into the water.

THE WEI ŽÎ HEXAGRAM

Wei Žî intimates progress and success (in the circumstances which it implies). (We see) a young fox that has nearly crossed (the stream), when its tail gets immersed. There will be no advantage in any way.

p. 208

p. 209

full of confidence and therefore feasting (quietly). There will be no error. (If he) cherish this confidence,

p. 210

till he (is like the fox who) gets his head immersed, it will fail of what is right.

Footnotes

210:LXIV p. 208 Wei Žî is the reverse of Kî Žî. The name tells us that the successful accomplishment of whatever the writer had in his mind had not yet been realised. The vessel of the state has not been brought across the great and dangerous stream. Some have wished that the Yî might have concluded with Kî Žî, and the last hexagram have left us with the picture of human affairs all brought to good order. But this would not have been in harmony with the p. 209 idea of the Yî, as the book of change. Again and again it has been pointed out that we find in it no idea of a perfect and abiding state. just as the seasons of the year change and pursue an ever-recurring round, so is it with the phases of society. The reign of order has been, and has terminated; and this hexagram calls us to see the struggle for its realisation recommenced. It treats of how those engaged in that struggle should conduct themselves with a view to secure the happy consummation.

How the figure sets forth the state of things by its constituent trigrams will appear in Appendix II. A similar indication is supposed to be given by the lines, not one of which is in the correct place; the strong lines being all in even places, and t he weak lines in odd. At the same time each of them has a proper correlate; and so the figure gives an intimation of some successful progress. See also Appendix I.

The symbolism of the young fox suggests a want of caution on the part of those, in the time and condition denoted by the hexagram, who try to remedy prevailing disorders. Their attempt is not successful, and they get themselves into trouble and danger. Whatever can be done must be undertaken in another way.

I suppose a fox to be intended by the symbolism of line 1, bringing that animal on from the Thwan. Some of the commentators understand it of any animal. The line is weak, at the bottom of the trigram of peril, and responds to the strong 4, which is not in its correct place. Its subject attempts to be doing, but finds cause to regret his course.

The subject of line 2, strong, and in the centre, is able to repress himself, and keep back his carriage from advancing and there is good fortune.

The Khang-hsî editors say that it is very difficult to understand what is said under line 3; and many critics suppose that a negative has dropt out, and that we should really read that 'it will not be advantageous to try and cross the great stream.'

Line 4, though strong, is in an even place; and this might vitiate the endeavours of its subject to bring about a better state of things. But he is firm and correct. He is in the fourth place moreover, and immediately above there is his ruler, represented by a weak line, humble therefore, and prepared to welcome his endeavours. Let him exert himself vigorously and long, as Kâo Žung did in his p. 210 famous expedition (see last hexagram, line 3), and he will make progress and have success. Expeditions beyond the frontiers in those days were not very remote. Intercourse was kept up between the army and the court. Rewards, distinctions, and whatever was necessary to encourage the army, were often sent to it.

Line 5 is weak, in an odd place. But its subject is the ruler, humble and supported by the subject of the strong 2; and hence the auspice is very good.

The subject of line 6, when the work of the hexagram has been done, appears disposed to remain quiet in the confidence of his own power, but enjoying himself; and thereby he will do right. If, on the contrary, he will go on to exert his powers, and play with the peril of the situation, the issue will be bad.