Influence, Line 4

Alone in the sequence, the fourth station has no anatomy attached to it. Legge's translation gives firm correctness leading to good fortune and preventing all occasion for repentance, then adds that if the subject is unsettled in his movements only his friends will follow his purpose. The commentary notes that no harm has yet come from a wish to influence, and that an unsettled subject's power to influence is neither brilliant nor great.

Its place in the figure is what makes the omission speak. Below it the hexagram has climbed from toe to calf to thigh; above it will come the flesh along the spine and then the jaws and tongue. The fourth is the seat the classic associates with the region of the heart, and instead of a body part the text describes a state of mind, which is where influence in this hexagram is supposed to originate in the first place.

The stroke is strong in an even seat, incorrect by the ordinary rule, at the base of the upper trigram Dui. That incorrectness is the source of the restlessness the line reports. What is offered in place of a promise is a condition: firm correctness produces the good fortune, and its absence produces a following made up only of people already inclined to agree. The hexagram's Image counsels keeping the mind free of preoccupation and open to others, and this is the line where that counsel is either met or missed.

Nine in the fourth place is the hexagram's most practical line about influence and it is addressed to somebody trying to move others. The good fortune is conditional and the condition comes first: be firm and correct, and there will be no cause for regret. What happens in the absence of that steadiness is described precisely rather than punished. The person's thoughts go back and forth, and the only people who follow are friends, meaning those whose agreement was never in question.

That is the recognisable failure the line warns against. A wavering position gathers an audience of the already convinced and nobody else, and the commentary makes plain that such influence is neither brilliant nor great. Nothing has gone wrong yet, which is the other half of the reading: the situation remains open, and the wish to influence has so far done no damage to anyone.

When the line changes, the upper trigram Dui becomes Kan and the figure becomes Obstruction, King Wen 39, water above the mountain and a road that will not open. The transformation names the consequence of leaving the wavering unresolved. An influence that never settles into a firm position does not merely fail to spread. It hardens into the kind of situation the classic advises turning back from in order to work on oneself instead.