The Gentle, Line 6

The sixth line of The Gentle (King Wen 57) is drawn as yang, the numeral nine in the old divination manuals. James Legge's translation renders the line as penetrating action beneath a couch, losing even the axe with which he does his work, firm correctness brings evil though he is correct. The image sits inside a hexagram whose judgment as a whole concerns some small attainment and progress, advantage in having somewhere to go, advantage in seeing the great man, and this line supplies one stage of that larger reading rather than a complete statement on its own.

Structurally the line stands at the topmost place of the upper trigram Xun, wind in Legge's readings of the eight trigrams, while the lower trigram of the hexagram is Xun, wind in the same traditional set of images. The Great Symbolism of the hexagram reads winds following one on another; the superior man reiterates his orders and carries his affairs into effect, and the sixth line takes its place inside that combined picture of Xun below and Xun above.

Read on its own the line neither opens nor closes the hexagram's argument. It marks the point where Xun is either forming (in the lower trigram) or completing itself (in the upper), and later interpreters treat its image, Losing the Axe with Which He Works, as the concrete case through which the hexagram's abstract judgment becomes visible in a single situation rather than a general principle.

As a divinatory line, nine at the sixth place of The Gentle reads within the hexagram's overall concern with some small attainment and progress, advantage in having somewhere to go, advantage in seeing the great man. The line occupies a place that does not match its own nature in the classical doctrine that odd places favour a firm, yang line and even places favour a yielding, yin line. Its own text, that penetrating action beneath a couch, losing even the axe with which he does his work, firm correctness brings evil though he is correct, is the particular fortune assigned to this one stage of the situation, not to the hexagram as a whole.

The sixth line corresponds by classical convention with the third line, and the two do not correspond here, since both lines share the same character. Read together with the trigram it belongs to, Xun in the upper position of the figure, the line marks the far edge of the hexagram, past the point the ruling fifth line governs, one stage in the six stage movement the hexagram traces from its first line to its last.

A change at this line, from yang to its opposite, is the mechanism the tradition uses to move from one hexagram to another. Flipping the sixth line of The Gentle turns Xun into Kan while the other trigram, Xun, stays as it is, which yields The Gentle's changing partner, The Well (King Wen 48), the hexagram this line is recorded as transforming into.