Modesty, Line 2

The second line raises a question the first never had to face: what happens to modesty once other people notice it. Legge's translation describes humility that has made itself recognised, and attaches good fortune to firm correctness rather than to the recognition. The phrasing is careful. The humility does the making known, not its subject, which is the difference between a quality that has become visible through conduct and one that has been advertised.

Centrally placed in the lower trigram Gen, a yielding stroke in an even position, this line is correct by every standard the system applies, and its centrality is what allows the recognition to be harmless. Modesty at the edge of a trigram can tip into either self effacement or display. Held at the centre, it simply is what it is, and the notice it attracts does not alter it, because nothing about it was arranged for an audience in the first place.

The condition attached to the good fortune matters as much as the promise. Firm correctness is the guard against the one real danger of this position, which is that being known for humility becomes a reputation worth maintaining, at which point the humility has quietly turned into its opposite. The line does not ask its subject to hide. It asks that what is seen continue to be what is actually there.

Drawn as a changing line, six in the second place usually answers a situation in which a querent has been recognised, praised or singled out for something they did not campaign for. The reading is favourable, and the good fortune is real, but it is conditioned on constancy rather than on the recognition itself. The advice is to receive the notice without adjusting anything in response to it, since every adjustment made for the sake of being seen well is a step away from what was seen.

The line's central position in the lower trigram carries a practical implication for a reading. Whatever the querent is being credited with is genuinely characteristic of them and not a performance, which is why the situation is safe. Trouble would begin only if the recognition became a standard to live up to publicly, and the classical warning against that is contained entirely in the demand for firmness rather than in any explicit caution.

There is a second, quieter use of the line. It answers querents who suspect that modesty requires silence, and it says otherwise: humility that becomes audible through ordinary speech and work is still humility. A person need not conceal competence to remain unassuming. What the line asks is that the account given of oneself stay accurate, neither inflated for advantage nor deflated for effect, and it attaches good fortune to holding exactly that line.