The I Ching or Book of Changes (136 page)

11
. [Cf. R. Wilhelm and C. G. Jung,
The Secret of the Golden Flower
, tr. Cary F. Baynes (London and New York. 1931; new edn., revised, 1962), in which this address appears as an appendix. The book did not appear in English until a year after Wilhelm’s death. The address is also in
The Spirit in Man, Art, and Literature
(Coll. Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 15).]

12
. The reader will find it helpful to look up all four of these hexagrams in the text and to read them together with the relevant commentaries.

1
. [213 B.C.]

2
. [Beginning in the last half of the third century B.C. and ending about A.D. 220.]

3
. [
Shu Ching
, the oldest of the Chinese classics. Modern scholarship has placed most of the records contained in the
Shu Ching
near the first millennium B.C., though formerly a much greater age was ascribed to the earliest of them.]

4
. [Fifth and fourth centuries B.C.]

5
. We might mention here, because of its oddity, the grotesque and amateurish attempt on the part of Rev. Canon McClatchie, M.A., to apply the key of “comparative mythology” to the
I Ching
. His book was published in 1876 under the title,
A Translation of the Confucian YiKing or the Classic of Changes, with Notes and Appendix
.

6
. From the discussion here presented, it will become self-evident that the Book of Changes was not a lexicon, as has been assumed in many quarters.

7
. [
Zeichen
, meaning sign, is used by Wilhelm to denote the linear figures in the
I Ching
, those of three lines as well as those of six lines. The Chinese word for both types of signs is
kua
. To avoid ambiguity, the precedent established by Legge (
The Sacred Books of the East
, XVI:
The Yi King
) has been adopted throughout: the term “trigram” is used for the sign consisting of three lines, and “hexagram” for the sign consisting of six lines.]

8
. [For this reason, the numbers 7 and 8 never appear in the portion of the text dealing with the meanings of the individual lines.]

9
. [The stalks come from the plant known to us as common yarrow, or milfoil (
Achillea millefolium
).]

10
. [Second half of fifth century B.C.]

11
. [551-479 B.C.]

12
.
Lun Yü
, IX, 16. [This book comprises conversations of Confucius and his disciples.]

13
. [Here, as throughout the book, Wilhelm uses the German word
Sinn
(“meaning”) in capitals (
SINN
) for the Chinese word
tao
(see
here
and n. 1). The reasons that led Wilhelm to choose
SINN
to represent
tao
(see p. xiv of the introduction to his translation of Lao-tse:
Tao Te King: Das Buch des Alten von Sinn und Leben
, 3rd edn., Düsseldorf and Cologne, 1952) have no relation to the English word “meaning.” Therefore in the English rendering, “tao” has been used wherever
SINN
occurs.]

14
. [Known as
t’ai chi t’u
, “the supreme ultimate.” See R. Wilhelm,
A Short History of Chinese Civilization
, tr. by J. Joshua (London, 1929), p. 249.]

15
. Cf. the noteworthy discussions of Liang Ch’i-ch’ao in the Chinese journal
The Endeavor
, July 15 and 22,1923, also the English essay by B. Schindler, “The Development of the Chinese Conceptions of Supreme Beings,”
Asia Major
, Hirth Anniversary Volume (London: Probsthain, n.d.), pp. 298-366.

16
. Cf. the extremely important discussions of Hu Shih in
The Development of the Logical Method in Ancient China
(2nd edn., New York: Paragon, 1963), and the even more detailed discussion in the first volume of his history of philosophy [
Chung-kuo chê-hsüeh-shih-ta-kang
; not available in translation].

17
. Question has centered especially upon the trigram K’an
, which resembles the character for water,
shui
(
).

18
. [According to tradition, 2205-1766 B.C.]

19
. [According to tradition, 1766-1150 B.C.]

20
. [King Wên was the head of a western state that suffered oppression from the house of Shang (Yin). He was given the title of king posthumously by his son Wu, who overthrew Chou Hsin, took possession of the Shang realm, and became the first ruler of the Chou dynasty, which in traditional chronology is dated 1150-249 B.C.]

21
. Some are in the section known as the
Wên Yen
[Commentary on the Words of the Text], some in the
Ta Chuan
[Great Commentary]. [Cf.
here
.]

22
. [The Great Learning presents the Confucian principles concerning the education of the “superior man,” based on the view that innate within man are the qualities that when developed guide him to a personal and a social ethic. The Doctrine of the Mean shows that the “way of the superior man” leads to harmony between heaven, man, and earth. Both of these works belong to the school of thought led by Tzu-ssu, grandson of Confucius. They originally formed part of the
Li Chi
, the Book of Rites. Under the titles
Ta Hsio
and
Kung Yung
they can be found as bks. 39 and 28 in Legge’s translation of the Book of Rites (
The Sacred Books of the East
, XXVII:
The Li Ki
, Oxford, 1885).]

23
. [Fourth century B.C.]

24
. [All three are Han scholars.]

25
. [A.D. 226-249.]

26
. [A.D. 960-1279.]

27
. [Ch’êng Hao, A.D. 1032-1085.]

28
. [A.D. 1130-1200.]

29
. [A.D. 1662-1722.]

30
. [A number of footnote quotations from German poetry, chiefly passages from Goethe, have been omitted in the English rendering because their poetic suggestiveness disappears in translation.]

1
. The hexagram is assigned to the fourth month, May–June, when the light-giving power is at its zenith, i.e., before the summer solstice has marked the beginning of the year’s decline. [The German text reads “April–May”; this is obviously a slip, for the first month of the Chinese lunar year extends approximately from the beginning of February to the beginning of March. New Year is a variable date, falling around February 5. Two or three other slips of this sort occurring later in the book have been similarly corrected, but without special mention.]

2
. [The German word used here is
fördernd
, literally rendered by “furthering.” It occurs again and again as a key word in Wilhelm’s rendering of the Chinese text. To avoid extreme awkwardness, the phrase “is favorable” is occasionally used as an alternative.]

3
. [This quotation and those following are from commentary material on this hexagram appearing in
bk. III
. It will be noted here, as well as in a number of other instances, that the wording of the passages is not identical in the two books.]

4
. Cf. Gen. 2:1 ff., where the development of the different creatures is also attributed to the fall of rain.

5
. [“Mores” is the word chosen to render the German word
Sitte
, when the latter refers, as in the present instance, to what the Chinese know as
li
. However, neither “mores” nor any other available English word, such as “manners” or “customs,” conveys an adequate idea of what
li
stood for in ancient China, because none of them necessarily denotes anything more than behavior growing out of and regulated by tradition. The ideas for which
li
stands seem to have had their origin in a religious attitude to life and in ethical principles developing out of that attitude. On the religious side
li
meant the observance with true piety of the ritual through which the “will of heaven” was interpreted and made to prevail on earth. On the moral side it meant the sense of propriety—understood to be innate in man—that, through training, makes possible right relationships in personal life and in society.
Li
was the cornerstone upon which Confucius built in his effort to bring order out of chaos in his era (see
The Sacred Books of the East
, XXVII:
The Li Ki
). Obedience to the code of
li
was entirely self-imposed as regards the “superior man,” who in feudal times was always a man of rank. The conduct of the “inferior man”—the lower-class individual—was governed by law.]

6
. [See
here
. The text of the
Wên Yen
(Commentary on the Words of the Text) appears in
bk. III
.]