The I Ching, Legge tr.: Text Section II: XLVIII. The &...

This is an excerpt from the *I Ching* (Book of Changes), presenting Hexagram 48 — "Jing" (The Well) — together with what appears to be a 19th-century scholarly commentary, likely James Legge's English translation, offering both the traditional line readings and a moralizing gloss. The central argument is that a well's defining qualities — permanence, depth, universal availability, and dependence on active use — make it an apt metaphor for good governance: just as a well's water is worthless unless drawn to the surface, inherited principles of righteous rule are worthless unless faithfully applied. The six individual line readings interpret the well's condition along a spectrum from a corrupt, unused well (line 1, representing unfit rulers) through a clear but neglected well (line 3, a capable minister ignored by an unwise king) to a freely flowing, uncovered well (line 6, signifying sincerity and inexhaustible good fortune). A distinctive claim in the commentary is that the hexagram's original character was pictorial, depicting a plot of land divided among eight farming families sharing a communal well at its center — grounding the political metaphor in a specific ancient agrarian institution. The commentary explicitly moralizes beyond the text, noting that one author "was wise beyond his lines" when reflecting on wasted talent, signaling a tension between mechanical symbol-reading and genuine ethical insight.

The I Ching, Legge tr.: Text Section II: XLVIII. The &...

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