Difficulty at the Beginning, Line 4

The fourth line returns to the image of horses in retreat, but the setting has changed from the second line's uncertain approach to a more deliberate courtship. Legge's rendering gives the horses of the chariot appearing in retreat, and the fuller traditional reading attached to this line describes a search for marriage alliance in which advancing now brings good fortune, the hesitation of retreat giving way to the advantage of a renewed approach rather than an abandoned one.

This line opens the upper trigram Kan, water, the trigram associated with danger and difficulty that gives the hexagram its overhanging obstacle. Occupying the lowest place of that trigram, the line marks a first test of whether the patience built through the lower trigram Zhen can be carried into more exposed territory, where the surrounding difficulty is felt most directly. The horses' hesitation reflects that exposure honestly, but the line's judgment is that hesitation here should be answered by continued advance rather than by giving up the pursuit.

Chinese commentary tradition often reads this line together with the second, both built from the same image of horses seeming to retreat, but distinguishes their outcomes: where the second line counsels patient waiting for a suitor not yet understood, the fourth line counsels active pursuit of a union whose rightness is now clearer. The difference marks real progress across the hexagram, from uncertain retreat to confident advance toward the same essential goal.

Six in the fourth place is read divinatorially as encouragement to renew an approach that earlier hesitation had interrupted. Where the second line counseled patient waiting toward an uncertain arrival, the fourth line, opening the upper trigram, shows that the moment for waiting has passed and the moment for advancing has arrived: seeking union now, in the traditional reading attached to this line, brings good fortune where retreat once seemed the safer course.

This line's position at the foot of the upper trigram Kan marks it as a first test of whether patience cultivated through the lower trigram can now translate into confident action within the more exposed territory the upper trigram represents. A reading landing here often signals a relationship, partnership, or undertaking that has already passed through an uncertain early stage and is now ready for the querent to pursue it openly rather than continue treating it with the caution appropriate to an earlier phase.

Divinatory tradition reads this line as a corrective against excessive caution carried past its usefulness: the same image of retreating horses that once counseled patience now, at a later stage of the same difficulty, counsels the opposite. A changing line here tells the querent to recognize that circumstances have shifted since the second line's caution applied, and that continuing to hesitate at this point risks losing an advantage that active pursuit would now secure.