Grace, Line 6

Grace ends by removing itself. Legge's translation shows one with white as his only ornament, and grants that there will be no error. A hexagram that has spent five lines on adornment closes on the absence of colour, and the closing is not a rejection of anything that came before it. White is still named as an ornament here. The line does not say that decoration was a mistake; it says that at the summit the last refinement available is to take the decoration away.

The sequence supports the reading. The first line declined a carriage, the fourth arrived in unrelieved white, the fifth gave less than it could have, and the sixth completes the movement by keeping nothing back to display. Each step reduces rather than adds, and the hexagram turns out to have been describing a progressive stripping all along, with the middle lines showing how much is lost when ornament is allowed to lead.

A yang stroke stands in this even position at the top of the upper trigram Gen, past the ruling fifth place and formally incorrect by the letter of the rule. Being outside the ruling seat is what makes the plainness available, since nothing at this height has to be maintained for anyone. The verdict of no error is modest by design. Nothing is gained at this position and nothing is claimed, and the hexagram of beautiful appearances is content to finish with an appearance that asserts nothing at all.

A querent drawing this changing line is being advised to simplify something that has become elaborate. The counsel applies to whatever the reading concerns rather than to taste in general: a proposal carrying too much justification, a piece of work padded past its argument, a role performed with more presentation than the role requires, a relationship conducted with more ceremony than affection. Take the additions off and see what is left standing.

The verdict is deliberately small. No error is granted, and no good fortune is promised, which tells a querent that this is a correction rather than an advance. Something has drifted toward ornament and the line restores the balance; nothing new arrives as a result. That modesty is worth respecting, since the temptation at the end of a hexagram about beauty is to read the final plainness as a triumph, when the text treats it merely as the absence of fault.

Firm in a yielding place at the top of the upper trigram Gen, standing past the ruling fifth line, the stroke has nothing left to maintain and no audience to maintain it for. Readings land here at the end of long projects, at the close of a career stage, and at the point where someone stops explaining themselves. The querent has already done whatever was required to be presentable; the line simply says that continuing to be presentable is no longer where the remaining value is.