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 426

CHAP. 8.
APPENDIX III.
399
Chapter VIII. 53. The Yt is a book which should not be let slip from the mind. Its method (of teaching) is marked by the frequent changing (of its lines). They change and move without staying in one place), flowing about into any one of the six places of the hexagram. They ascend and descend, ever inconstant. The strong and the weak lines change places, so that an invariable and compendious rule cannot be derived from them ;-it must vary as their changes indicate.
54. The goings forth and comings in (of the lines) are according to rule and measure. (People) learn from them in external and internal affairs to stand in awe.
55. (The book), moreover, makes plain the nature of anxieties and calamities, and the causes of them. Though its students) have neither master nor guardian, it is as if their parents drew near to them.
56. Beginning with taking note of its explanations, we reason out the principles to which they point. We thus find out that it does supply a constant and standard rule. But if there be not the proper men (to carry this out), the course cannot be pursued without them.
istics of each phase; and 52, its use. The 'therefore' with which paragraph 50 commences shows the process of thought by which the writer passed from the anxiety that possessed the mind of the author of the Yi to the use to be derived, in such circumstances, from the study of Li and the other hexagrams.
Chapter VIII, paragraphs 53-56, describes the method of study. ing the Yi as consisting very much in watching the changes that take place in the lines, and reflecting on the appended explanations; while, after all, much must depend on there being the proper men,' to carry its lessons into practice.
Digitized by Google