Text of Confucianism Part 02

SR No.: 007676
Original Sutra Author: N/A
Author: James Legge
Publisher: Oxford
Publication Year: 1882
Total Pages: 2405
Language: English
Classification: Book_English
File Size: 43 MB

Page 285

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THE APPENDIXES.
SECT. II.
pleasure and, on the ground of that, movement following. The marrying away is of a younger sister.
3. 'Any action will be evil :'—the places (of the lines) are not those appropriate to them.
It will be in no wise advantageous :'— the weak (third and fifth lines) are mounted on strong lines.
LV. I. Făng has the signification of being great. It is made up of the trigrams (representing)
LIV. 1. Kwei Mei in this Appendix has the meaning simply of marriage, and for Mei we might substitute Nü, daughter' or young lady.' This appears from the writer's going on to point out, as elsewhere, the analogy between the growth of things in nature from the interaction of heaven and earth and the increase of mankind through marriage. He does this with a delicate touch. There is no grossness in the original any more than there is in the translation.
But how are we to reconcile this reference to the action of heaven and earth with the bad auspice of the Thwan? The Khang-hsî editors felt the pressure of this difficulty, and they adduce a similar inconsistency in the account of hexagram 44 in this treatise, adding, 'From this we may say that the interaction of the yin and yang cannot be dispensed with, but that we ought to be careful about it in the beginning in order to prevent mischief in the end. This is the doctrine of the Y1.' This is very well, but it is no solution of the difficulty. The editors could not admit that the author of the Appendix did not understand or did not deal fairly with the Text; for that author, they thought, was Confucius.
2. The same editors say that paragraph 2 implies both that the desire for the marriage originated with the lady, and that she was aware that the gentleman was older than herself.
3. The position of a divided line above an undivided is always represented as an evil omen; it is difficult to understand why. There is less of an appearance of reason about it than in some other things which are said about the lines. The lines are where they cannot but be from the way in which the figures were formed.
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