Grace, Line 4

The fourth line is the most crowded image in Grace and the most human. Legge's translation shows a subject looking as if adorned but only in white, mounted on a white horse and flying swiftly on, seeking union with the first line, while the third line between them pursues, not as a robber but intent on a matrimonial alliance. Everything is white, which is to say unornamented, and everything is in motion, and the whole difficulty of the line is that motion and plainness together look alarming.

The colour is the key to the ornament question the hexagram keeps asking. This line has stopped decorating. Horse and rider are both plain, and plainness offered as a serious approach can be misread, since an unadorned arrival gives an observer nothing to interpret it by. The third line, hurrying after the same union, is not a threat at all, but at speed and without ornament it is indistinguishable from one until it stops long enough to be understood.

A yin stroke correctly occupies this even position at the base of the upper trigram Gen, and it answers the first line across the span of the hexagram, the two of them joined in preferring the plain to the decorated. Between them stands the firm third stroke, which is why the approach cannot be direct. The line describes a genuine relation delayed by appearances rather than obstructed by anyone's intent, and it resolves the moment the appearances are read correctly.

A querent drawing this changing line is caught in a misunderstanding rather than a conflict, and the distinction is the entire counsel. Someone approaching them is being taken for an opponent, or the querent's own approach is being received that way, and in both cases the intent is a union of some kind. Readings arrive here on proposals mistaken for takeovers, offers of help mistaken for criticism, and overtures whose bluntness has been read as hostility.

The line locates the cause precisely, in speed and in plainness. An unornamented approach carries no signals for the other party to read, and an approach made at pace gives them no time to look for any. Neither is a fault, and neither is deception; together they simply produce an impression that is wrong. The remedy the image implies is to slow down long enough for the intention to become legible, since nothing here needs to change except the reading.

Yielding and correctly placed at the base of the upper trigram Gen, the stroke reaches across the hexagram toward the first line, and the firm third stroke standing between them is the source of the interference. A querent should therefore expect the obstacle to be positional rather than personal, someone in the way rather than someone opposed. The line offers no verdict of fortune, which suits it: the outcome depends on whether the parties stay long enough to recognise each other.