Progress, Line 4

The fourth line holds the one animal in the figure and it is not a flattering one. Legge's translation shows the subject advancing like a marmot, a burrowing rodent, and states that however firm and correct he may be his position is perilous, while the commentary on the image gives the reason plainly: the place is not the one appropriate for him. The verdict is unusual in that correctness is granted and then set aside as insufficient.

The structure is what the commentary is pointing at. This is a strong stroke in an even place, incorrect by the ordinary rule, and it is the first line of the upper trigram Li, the bright one, standing immediately below the yielding fifth line that rules the hexagram. A firm line pressed up against the ruling seat and not entitled to the ground it stands on is the classic picture of somebody who has advanced past what their position can support.

The rodent supplies the manner rather than the fact. It is an animal that gathers and hides and moves nervously, and the advance the line describes has the same quality: acquisitive, anxious, unwilling to be seen doing it. Progress in this hexagram is the sun coming up over the earth, an advance that is visible by its nature, and the fourth line is what advance looks like when it wants the gains without the light.

Nine in the fourth place is a warning aimed at somebody who is doing well. The line grants that the subject may be entirely firm and correct and still calls the position dangerous, which makes it one of the few readings in the classic where good conduct is explicitly not enough on its own. The commentary locates the fault in the place rather than in the person: it is not the one appropriate for him.

A querent drawing this has usually advanced faster than the standing that would justify it, and the marmot in the image describes the resulting behaviour rather than the person's character. Advance held nervously, with the gains hoarded and the movement kept quiet, is what the text is picturing. In a hexagram whose whole figure is the sun coming out over the earth, an advance conducted out of sight is already at odds with the situation it sits inside.

When the line changes, the upper trigram Li becomes Gen and the figure becomes Splitting Apart, King Wen 23, in which five yielding lines have undermined a single strong one at the top and the structure is coming away. That is the danger this line names, drawn out to its conclusion. What is held without the position to hold it gets eroded from underneath, and the classic files that as the end of advancing into ground which was never one's own.