Following, Line 5

The fifth line resolves the hexagram by changing what is followed. Legge's translation shows the ruler sincere in fostering all that is excellent, and pronounces good fortune. Every position below this one has been occupied with attachments to persons, the little boy, the man of experience, the adherents, the associates beyond the gate. Here the object of following is not a person at all but a quality, and the difficulty the earlier lines kept running into simply does not arise.

A strong stroke correctly holds this odd position, central in the upper trigram Dui, which makes it the only line in Following that is strong, central and correct together. The seat of rule in a hexagram about attachment is the one place where following could easily be replaced by being followed, and the text refuses that. What the ruler does here is foster, which is neither commanding nor submitting: excellence is sought out wherever it exists and supported, and the ruler's own position is not the measure of it.

Sincerity is doing specific work in the sentence and not merely praising the ruler's character. A ruler who supports what is excellent for the appearance of it selects what will be noticed; a sincere one selects what is actually good, including what will never be credited to him. That distinction is what the good fortune rests on, and it is the standard against which the fourth line's ambiguous following and the sixth line's binding attachment are both measured.

Nine in the fifth place is the most straightforwardly favourable line in Following, and a querent who draws it is generally in a position to choose what a group, a team or a household orients itself around. The reading advises attaching to the quality rather than to any individual carrying it: back the better proposal, support the more capable person for as long as they are the more capable one, and let the standard rather than the relationship decide.

This is the ruling seat of the hexagram and the counsel is correspondingly steady. What makes the line work in practice is that it is immune to the problems the other positions run into. An attachment to a person can be lost, outgrown or exploited, which is what the second, third and fourth lines each describe in turn. An attachment to what is excellent survives the departure of whoever happened to embody it, so the querent is never left holding a loyalty that has outlived its object.

The word sincerity carries the practical test. A querent should ask whether they would still support the excellent thing if supporting it brought them no credit, or if it came from someone they dislike, or if it made an earlier judgement of theirs look wrong. Answering yes is the whole of what the line asks. The good fortune it promises follows from the fact that a person known to choose on that basis is trusted with far more than their formal position would otherwise allow.