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 Yi King or Yi Sha is ‘the Classic or Book of Changes.’ It is also applied often to the changes in the lines of the 1 By an A; the sun, placed over ZF. a form of the old » = CF): the moon, CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 39 figures, made by the manipulations of divination, apart from any sentence or oracle concerning them delivered by king Wan or his son. There is therefore the system of the Yi as well as the book of the Yi. 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?.’ 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 be- Changes in the lines of the figures and ee es the changes of external phenomena show ging and the changes a wonderful harmony and concurrence. We in external ae phenomena. read:—— ‘The Yi 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.’
‘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 ordi- nations; 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) *.’
‘(Through the Yi) 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 40 THE Yi KING. CH. IIIfigured, and (by means of the diagrams) represented their material forms and their character.’
All that is thus predicated of the sage, or ancient sages, though the writer probably had Fd-hsi 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 ®.’
I quoted largely, in the second chapter, from this Ap- pendix 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 the significance, when looked at from certain points of view, which have been determined for us by king Wan and the duke of Kau. 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 avery early time. I will not say 5,200 years ago, in the days of Fit-hsi, 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 Sha King, in a document that purports to be of the twenty-third century B.C.°, 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 staiks of a plant*, the Ptarmica Sibirica®, 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 Was not to discover future events absolutely, divination. as if they could be known beforehand °, but Divination.
Ancient divination.
* III, i, 38 (chap. 8. 1). * Doctrine of the Mean, chap. xxii. 8 The Sh@ II, ii, 18. * The Sh V, iv, 20, 31. * See Williams’ Syllabic Dictionary on the character: * Canon McClatchie (first paragraph of his Introduction) says:—‘ The Y? is regarded by the Chinese with peculiar veneration...as containing a mine of CH, Ill. INTRODUCTION. AI 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 shan, or ‘spirit-like,’ is ascribed to them. Occasionally, in the field of Chinese literature, we meet with doubts as to the efficacy of divina- tion, and the folly of expecting any revelation of the character of the future from an old tortoise-shell and a handful of withered twigs!; 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 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 A i ‘Of the odd and even numbers, the k w4 or lines of Ffi-hsi 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 Yi is often incautious, and a cursory reader may be misled; to a careful student, however, the meaning is plain. The second passage of the Sha, 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.’
1 A remarkable instance is given by Lifi A? (of the Ming dynasty, in the fifteenth century) in a story about Shao Phing, who had been marquis of Tung- ling in the time of Shin, but was degraded under Han. Having gone once to Sze-ma A’i-A, one of the most skilful diviners of the country, and wishing to know whether there would be a brighter future for him, Sze-ma 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 Ka Wan, or Elegant Writing.
42 THE YI KING. CH. III.
a subtle and invisible virtue that fitted them for use in divining. Given the stalks with such virtue, the process of mani- Formation Pulating them so as to form the lineal figures es ea is described (Section i, chap. 9, parr. 49-58), divining but it will take the student much time and Seek thought to master the various operations. Forty-nine stalks were employed, which were thrice ma- nipulated for each line, so that it took eighteen manipu- lations 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 g, 8, 7, 6 were appropriated'. The figures having been formed, recourse was had for their interpretation to the thwan of king Wan, and the em- blematic sentences of the duke of Kau. This was all the part which numbers played in the divination by the Yi, helping the operator to make up his lineal figure. An analogy has often been asserted between the numbers of the Yi 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 main- tained that Number was the Beginning (Principle, apx7) of things, the cause of their material existence, and of their * These numbers are commonly derived from the River Scheme, in the outer sides of which are the corresponding marks:— eeeeee, opposite to ee; ©000000, opposite to 0; eeeccecece, opposite toeeee; and 000000000, opposite toooo. 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 A’Lien ===, and 6 of the divided line, as representing Khwin == ==. 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.
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 43 modifications and different states, then the doctrine of the philosopher of Samos was different from that of the Yi', 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 Yi 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 Thenames "ames yin and yang’, of which I have Yinand spoken briefly on pp. 15,16. Up to this point, Lene: instead of them, the names for the two elementary forms of the lines have been kang and zau, which I have translated by ‘strong and weak,’ and which also occur here ten times. The following attempt to ex- plain these different names appears in the fifth Appendix, paragraph 4:— ‘Anciently when the sages made the Yi, it was with the design that its figures should be in conformity with the principles under- lying 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 righteous- ness. 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 signi- ficance 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 1 See the account of Pythagoras and his philosophy in Lewes’ History of Philosophy, pp. 18-38 (1871). 2 See Section i, 24, 32, 35; Section ii, 28, 29, 30, 35.
44 THE Yi KING. CH. IIT.
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 Yi 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’. To find it in the Yi 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 Yi,—the ever-changing phe- nomena of nature and experience. There is nothing but this in the ‘Great Treatise’ to task our powers;—nothing deeper or more abstruse.
1 As a specimen of what the ablest Sung scholars teach, I may give the remarks (from the ‘ Collected Comments’) of Ati Xan (of the same century as A‘ Hsi, rather earlier) on the 4th paragraph of Appendix V:—‘ In the Yi 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 sub- stantiated, 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 Yi 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.’
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 45 ee ee As inthe first Appendix, so in this, the name kwei- shan occurs twice; in paragraphs 21 and 50 of Section i. In the The name former instance, each part of the name has Kwei-shan. its significance. Kwei denotes the animal soul or nature, and Sh4n, the intellectual soul, the union of which constitutes the living rational man. I have trans- lated 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-shans are evidently the expanding and contracting principles of human ifenzmint: The kwei-shans are brought about by the dis- solution of the human frame, and consist of the expanding and ascending shan, which rambles about in space, and of the contracted and shrivelled kwei, which reverts to earth and nonentity 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 Aa Hsi, that ‘the kwei-shans refer to the contractions and expandings, the recedings and approachings of the productive and completing powers of the even and odd numbers”. 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 Ti)*.’ I shall refer to this version when considering the fifth Appendix.
en SEEN EEE 1 Dissertation on the Theology of the Chinese, pp. 111, 112. * ‘Theology of the Chinese, p. 122. 5 Translation of the Yi King, p. 312.
46 THE Yf KING. CH. LI.
The single character shan occurs more than twenty times;—used now as a substantive, now as an adjective, and again as averb. 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 }, 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 Yi. 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, 3ze- sze, the grandson of Confucius, whose death must have taken place between B.C. 400 and 450.
7. The fourth Appendix, the seventh ‘wmg’ of the Yi, need not detain us long. As I stated on p. 27, it is con- The fourth fined to an exposition of the Text on the first Appendix. 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 magnilo- quence of Mencius. It is said, for instance, by 3ze-sze, of Shan alone.
cu. Im. INTRODUCTION. 47 the sage, that ‘he is the equal or correlate of Heaven!,’ 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 *!’
One other passage may receive our consideration:— ‘The family that accumulates goodness is sure to have super- abundant happiness, and the family that accumulates evil is sure to have superabundant misery *.’
The language makes us think of the retribution of good and evil as taking place in the family, and not in the in- dividual; 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 affrma- tion 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 1 Kung-yung xxxi, 4. 2 Section i, 34. This is the only paragraph where k wei-shan occurs. $ Section ii, 5.
48 THE Yf KING. CH. II.
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 Yi professing to set forth its teach- ings 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 Yi. The doctrine of ‘the Three Powers’ is as much out of place in Con- fucianism 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.
8. It is very different with the fifth of the Appendixes, The fifth Which is made up of ‘Remarks on the Appendix. 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 Fi-hsi, and the latter, that of king Wan; 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 Yi,’ (that is, the lineal First figures, and the system of divination by paragraph. 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 opera- tions, to which the phenomena around them were owing, than they could otherwise do.
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 49 ean neem oe nnn rn eae The author goes on to speak of the Fa-hsi trigrams, and passes from them to those of king Wan 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 Yi. It says:— ‘ Khien is (the symbol of) heaven, and hence is styled father.
Khwin is (the symbol of) earth, and hence is ee of styled mother. Xn (shows) the first application . (of khwan to kien), 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 #hien to khwan), resulting in getting (the first of) its female (or divided lines), and hence we call it the oldest daughter. Kh4n (shows) a second application (of khwan to &hdien, and Lia second (of k&hien to khw4n), resulting in the second son and second daughter. In Kin and Tui we have a third application (of khw4n to khien and of khien to khw4n), resulting in the youngest son and youngest daughter.’
From this language has come the fable of a marriage between Kien and KhwaAn, 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’. According to the idea of changes, K Zien and Khwan are continually vary- ing their forms by their interaction. As here represented, the ee Ooo 1 This view seems to be in accordance with that of Wi Aang (of the Yuan dynasty), as given in the ‘ Collected Comments ’ of the Khang-hsi edition. The editors express their approval of it in preference to the interpretation of At Hsi, 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 THE Yi KING. CH, IIt.
other trigrams are not ‘ produced?’ by a marriage-union, but from the application, literally the seeking, of one of them— of Khwan as much as of K Aien—addressed to the other?.
This way of speaking of the trigrams, moreover. as father and mother, sons and daughters. is not so old as Ft-hsi; nor have we any real proof that it originated with king Wan. 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 prevailedthen 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. Kan, khAn, and kan are referred to as being yang, and sun, li, and tui as being yin. What is said about them is trifling and fanciful.
Leaving the question of the mythology of the Yi, 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 through the trigrams, and as being effected Operation of ‘ ate fiz.
God in nature by His Spirit. The description assumes the ee peculiar arrangement of the trigrams, ascribed ‘to king Wan, and which I have exhibited above, on page 33*%. Father Regis adopts the general view 1 But the Chinese term Shang jae 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.
* The significance of the mythological paragraph is altogether lost in Canon McClatchie’s version:—‘ Xhien is Heaven, and hence he is called Father: KhwaAn is Earth, and hence she is called Mother; Xan is the first male, and hence he is called the eldest son,’ &c. &c.
* The reader will understand the difference in the two arrangements better by a reference to the circular representations of them on Plate III.
CH. III. INTRODUCTION. 51 of Chinese critics that Wan purposely altered the earlier and established arrangement, as a symbol of the disorganisation and disorder into which the kingdom had fallen?. 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 Wan 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 Kan (to his producing work); He brings (His processes) into full and equal action in Sun; they are mani- fested to one another in Li; the greatest service is done for Him in Khwin; He rejoices in Tui; He struggles in Khien; He is comforted and enters into rest in Khan; and he completes (the work of) the year in Kan.’
God is here named Ti, 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 Ti; but to render it here by ‘Emperor’ would not affect the meaning of the paragraph. Xt Hsi says that ‘by Ti is intended the Lord and Governor of heaven;’ and Khung Ying-ta, about five centuries earlier than Af, quotes Wang Pi, who died A. D.
a 1, g. I, 23, 24:—‘ Observant etiam philosophi (lib. 15 Sinicae philosophiae Sing-li) principem Wan-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 pos- terior labentis anni pars afferre solet, velut in antecessum, repraesentandis idoneae videbantur; v. g. si symbolum ==—== Li, ignis, supponatur loco symboli =———— Khan, 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.
52 THE Yi KING. CH. It.
249, to the effect that ‘Ti is the lord who produces (all) things, the author of prosperity and increase.’