The I Ching, Legge tr.: Text Section II: LI. The K...

This is a classical Chinese divination text from the *I Ching* (Book of Changes), specifically the commentary on Hexagram 51, Zhèn (震, "Thunder" or "The Arousing"), presented in James Legge's 19th-century English translation with his accompanying scholarly notes. The hexagram is formed by doubling the trigram Kăn (thunder), and its central theme is how a person of consequence — symbolized as the "oldest son" inheriting authority — should conduct themselves during times of sudden upheaval, revolution, or social shock. The text argues that the ideal response to terrifying disruption is composed self-possession: being alert to danger without being paralyzed by it, like a priest who continues the sacrificial rite undistracted even as thunder crashes around them. Each of the six line readings maps a different psychological and positional response to crisis, ranging from prudent caution and good fortune (line 1) to supine helplessness (line 4) to the breathless, paralyzed fear of one caught at the climax of upheaval (line 6). Legge's commentary is notably skeptical of some traditional symbolism, explicitly flagging interpretations he finds "too fanciful" or opaque, including Kû Hsî's own admission of confusion — a distinctively candid philological honesty unusual in translations of this era. Readers interested in classical Chinese cosmology, the *I Ching*'s line-by-line interpretive method, or Victorian Sinological scholarship will find this excerpt representative of all three.

The I Ching, Legge tr.: Text Section II: LI. The K...

Related pages View as graph →