________________
1 24
THE YÎ KING.
TEXT.
6. The sixth line, divided, shows one moving his jaws and tongue.
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 Yi 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 it, 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 Rex 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 (
E E ), 'the youngest son,' and over it Tui (E ), the youngest daughter.' These are in 'happy union.'
Digitized by Google
