“Heaven in its motion gives the idea of strength”

“Heaven in its motion gives the idea of strength” is the Great Symbolism’s concise reading of the first hexagram, whose repeated heaven trigrams turn a cosmic image into an ethical injunction. In the translator’s rendering, heaven’s motion is not merely a description of the figure: it provides the model by which the superior man steels himself to ceaseless activity.

Image and Instruction

The Great Symbolism explains the hexagram through its two component trigrams and the way their blended meaning may be embodied in human conduct. The first hexagram repeats Khien, the trigram representing heaven; its motion signifies strength, and the superior man responds by sustaining activity without interruption. The statement therefore moves from image to practice: the heavens’ continuous movement becomes a pattern for disciplined human exertion.

The passage belongs to a broader method of reading the figures. The hexagrams consist of six whole or divided lines, and their meaning depends not only on individual lines but also on the subject represented by the hexagram and the relation among its parts. The Great Symbolism makes that combined structure legible by drawing a practical lesson from the trigrams composing it. Here, the repeated image of heaven gives the instruction its force: strength is expressed as continuing motion, not as a single act.

Place in the Text

The translator distinguishes the Great Symbolism from the interpretation of the hexagram as a whole attributed to King Wen and the line-by-line emblems attributed to the Duke of Zhou. King Wen’s account of a hexagram is said to accord with the combined significance of its six lines, while the Great Symbolism discusses how the two trigrams together inform the institutions and actions of rulers and exemplary people. The translator notes that this paragraph is not always in harmony with King Wen’s explanation and argues that its placement among the appendices on symbolism may reflect its recurring opening with the two trigrams.

The sentence is thus both an interpretation of a particular figure and an example of how the appendix turns symbolic arrangement into conduct. Its brief movement—from heaven, to strength, to the superior man’s sustained effort—makes the interpretive procedure unusually clear: the figure is not left as an abstract configuration, but is connected to a human practice.

Translation and Meaning

The translator’s account of translation helps explain why the English sentence is an interpretive rendering rather than a word-for-word reproduction. He argues that Chinese written characters function as symbols of ideas, and that their combination reflects what the writer thinks rather than simply recording what the writer would say. A literal version, on this view, cannot by itself convey the author’s meaning. The translator must bring his mind into relation with the author’s and then express the perceived ideas as accurately and concisely as possible, sometimes supplying words that the original leaves implicit.

He presents the Great Symbolism’s sentence about heaven’s motion as an example of this approach. The accompanying injunction—that the superior man, in accordance with the image, nerves himself to ceaseless activity—spells out the ethical implication of the symbol. Such added wording is not, in the translator’s account, a license to invent: it is meant to make explicit what he believes was already present in the writer’s thought. The expression therefore stands at the intersection of figure, ethical interpretation, and translation, carrying the movement of heaven into an instruction for human conduct.