Mengzi

Mencius appears in the commentary not as a participant in the hexagram narratives but as a named authority whose work clarifies interpretation and social categories. One reference invokes his account of how texts are read; another places travelers within a broad conception of who counts as a stranger. Together, the citations show the commentary using his writings to connect the I Ching’s interpretive practice with the lived world of its readers.

Interpretive Authority

In discussing the difficult mother-and-son designations assigned to lines in the hexagram Kû, the commentator quotes Philippe Grégoire Regis, who invokes Mencius’s advice about interpreting the Book of Odes. The citation supports a flexible method: the line images and their explanations should be fitted to the wording and sense of the judgment, rather than treated as carrying a fixed, hidden meaning in every appearance. The commentator acknowledges that the line labels remain difficult to explain, and leaves the problem unresolved; Mencius’s interpretive principle helps account for how such symbolic language may work, but does not remove the uncertainty.

This use of Mencius is methodological rather than biographical. His authority is brought into a discussion of textual adaptation, where images and names can serve the immediate meaning of a passage instead of expressing a universal code. The citation makes interpretive judgment part of the commentary’s account of the I Ching: readers must attend to how words function in context.

Travelers and Strangers

The commentary on the hexagram Lü uses Mencius to broaden the meaning of its subject. The name refers to people traveling abroad, including merchants who moved from state to state for business, but Mencius is cited for using the term for travelers generally, whatever had taken them away from their own states. The category therefore reaches beyond a single occupation: the defining circumstance is being away from one’s home state.

The commentary adds that Confucius himself is presented as a traveling stranger, then describes King Wen as addressing this class of people through the hexagram. Travelers are advised to cultivate humility and firm correctness; these qualities may help them avoid harm and achieve limited progress, though their low rank gives little basis for expecting great attainments. Mencius’s broad usage thus helps establish the human scope of the hexagram, which gives strangers in unfamiliar places a place within the I Ching’s teachings.