Progress, Line 3

The third line is carried by other people. Legge's translation has all parties reposing trust in the subject, with the result that occasion for repentance disappears, and the commentary on the image explains that their common aim is to move upward and to act. Nothing in the line describes anything the subject does. It describes a state of confidence that has formed around them.

That is a departure from the two lines below it, where advance was solitary. The first pursued the correct course alone with no charge, and the second was sorrowful and had to be blessed from outside the situation. Here the three yielding strokes of the lower trigram Kun are all moving in one direction and this one stands at the top of them. Kun is the earth, the compliant trigram, and three soft lines going along together are a body of shared intent rather than three separate weaknesses.

The stroke is yielding in an odd place, incorrect by the ordinary rule, and it makes no difference, which is the quiet argument the line is putting. What removes the repentance is not the fitness of the individual position but the trust attached to it. Progress is the figure of the sun rising over the earth, and by this station the whole surface has begun to be lit at once rather than in patches.

Six in the third place is a favourable reading whose favour comes from other people. All parties trust the subject and the grounds for regret disappear. A querent here has usually been worrying about their own standing, and the line answers a question they did not ask: the standing is already granted, by a group whose aim runs in the same direction as their own.

The commentary is careful to say that the shared purpose is to move upward and act, which keeps this from being mere popularity. Trust of that kind is given by people who want the same movement, and it lasts exactly as long as the movement does. The position itself is incorrect by the ordinary rule, a yielding stroke in an odd place at the top of the earth trigram Kun, and the line does not trouble to defend it, because what holds the subject up is not the seat they occupy.

When the line changes, the lower trigram Kun becomes Gen and the figure becomes The Wanderer, King Wen 56, a traveller with no standing anywhere and nothing but their own conduct to rely on. Set against a line whose entire strength is collective trust, that is a pointed destination. What is borrowed from a group can be withdrawn the moment the group's direction shifts, and this line is at its best only while the shared aim holds.