Great Preponderance, Line 5

The fifth line returns to the willow and finds it at the wrong end. Legge's translation describes a decayed willow producing flowers, paired with an older wife who has a young husband, and gives a verdict of neither blame nor praise, while the commentary on the image asks how such a thing could last. Where the second line's shoots broke from low on the trunk, flowers form at the tips of the branches, and a decayed tree that flowers is spending what remains rather than putting down anything new.

Structurally the stroke is strong and central at the ruling place of the upper trigram Dui, correct by the ordinary rule, which makes so flat a verdict surprising until the line's relationships are read. The second place, which would ordinarily answer the fifth, is strong as well, so no correspondence is available there. What remains is the yielding stroke immediately above, at the very top of the figure and at the end of everything the hexagram describes. The attachment is real and it leads nowhere.

The household comparison belongs to the Zhou period and states its terms openly. The text ranks a young wife with an old husband as advantageous and an older wife with a young husband as neither blameworthy nor praiseworthy, an asymmetry resting on that society's expectations about heirs and on how it weighed the ages of the two parties. It is given here as the text has it. The willow carries the structural point without the framing: flowers at the tip are the last display of a tree that will not shoot again.

Nine in the fifth place delivers almost no verdict at all, and for a ruling line that is a striking result. Neither blame nor praise is the whole of the judgement, and the commentary's question, how could it last, supplies the reason. Read divinatorially, this describes an arrangement doing no harm, attracting no criticism and producing nothing that will outlive it. A querent drawing this line is usually hoping for an assessment and is being told, quite deliberately, that there is not one to be had.

The line's isolation explains the flatness. It is strong, central and correctly placed at the seat of authority in the upper trigram Dui, which ought to be an excellent position, but the second place that would answer it is strong as well, leaving no correspondence below. Its only connection is the yielding line above, at the outer edge of the figure. A decayed willow flowering rather than shooting is the image for exactly that: activity at the tip, nothing at the root.

The text's household comparison, an older wife with a young husband, carries the Zhou period's own assumptions about marriage and heirs and is set down here as it stands rather than adjusted. What survives the framing is practical. Where an arrangement cannot renew itself, the useful question is not whether to condemn it but how long it needs to hold. When the line changes, the upper trigram Dui becomes Zhen and the figure becomes Duration, King Wen 32, which is the one thing this line does not have.