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 422

CHAP. 6.
APPENDIX III.
395
Chapter VI. 45. The Master said :-(The trigrams) Khien and Khwăn may be regarded as the gate of the Yt.' Khien represents what is of the yang nature (bright and active); Khwăn what is of the yin nature (shaded and inactive). These two unite according to their qualities, and there comes the embodiment of the result by the strong and weak (lines). In this way we have the phenomena of heaven and earth visibly exhibited, and can comprehend the operation of the spiritual intelligence.
46. The appellations and names (of the diagrams and lines) are various, but do not go beyond (what is to be ascribed to the operation of these two conditions). When we examine the nature and style
second line of it. The being firm as a rock' is understood to symbolise the state of rest,' the quiet self-possession out of which successful movement and action is understood to spring.
In paragraph 42, 'the son of the Yen family'is Yen Hui, the favourite disciple of Confucius. The passage quoted from the Yi is that on the first line of Fû, the 24th hexagram.
To paragraph 43, as to paragraph 38, I would prefix the characters for The Master said.' Male and female' is to be taken generally, and not confined to the individuals of the human pair. One Chinese writer says that in the transformations ascribed to heaven and earth, birds, fishes, animals, and plants are included, but from the transformation in its living types' plants are excluded, because in their generation there is nothing analogous to the emission and reception of seed. Other Chinese writers, however, are well enough acquainted with the sexual system of plants. It would seem to me that Confucius, if the paragraph were really his, intended only plants or the vegetable world in his reference to the operation of heaven and earth, and had all living tribes in view in his mention of male and female. The passage of the Yî referred to is on the third line of Sun, the 41st hexagram. The application of it is far-fetched.
Paragraph 44. See on the fifth line of Yî, the 42nd hexagram.
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