Breakthrough (Kwâi)

Breakthrough (Kwâi), also identified as Hexagram XLIII, is a political and moral account of confronting a powerful wrongdoer. Its decisive principle is that removing corruption requires public disclosure, broad support, and awareness of danger—not a rush to violence. The commentary sets this struggle against the seasonal image of winter’s last dark remnant giving way to approaching warmth and light, while the lines show how premature action, isolation, and poor judgment can defeat the purpose.

The Hexagram’s Political Meaning

The hexagram’s central problem is how to put a corrupt but influential person out of power. In the commentary, the top divided line represents the remaining cold and dark of winter, while the five undivided lines represent the advance of warmer, brighter days. Politically, that final divided line stands for a bad or small man: a feudal prince or high minister lending his power to a corrupt government, or to a dynasty already near its end. The five firm lines, by contrast, represent good order or a succeeding dynasty. The seasonal pattern makes the conflict one of transition, but the commentary does not treat change as automatic or harmless: the person attempting it must rely more on character than on military force and must first win general sympathy.

The hexagram’s judgment turns that interpretation into a procedure. The culprit’s guilt is to be exhibited in the royal court, and an earnest appeal made for sympathy and support. The danger of cutting off the criminal must remain in view. The undertaking should also be announced among its adherents, with a clear demonstration that arms are not being taken up lightly or at once. Only after these public and ethical conditions are established does the judgment promise advantage in advancing.

Conduct, Risk, and the Lines

The first line warns against confusing strength with readiness. Its subject presses forward proudly, represented as advancing on the toes, but does not succeed and incurs blame. The commentary explains the failure in terms of timing and preparation: the enterprise is still at too early a stage, and its preparations are too slight to make victory certain. Restraint here is not abandonment of the goal; it is recognition that force without sufficient groundwork may compromise it.

The second line presents a different kind of vulnerability. Its subject is apprehensive and appeals for sympathy and help. Hostile measures may be taken late at night, but the line says there is no need for anxiety. Set beside the first line, this passage distinguishes exposed but supported caution from overconfident advance: fear is not itself a failure when the person seeks help and remains within the undertaking’s proper course.

The sixth line gives the danger of isolation its starkest form. Its subject has no helpers to call upon, and the end is evil. This conclusion sharpens the hexagram’s opening demand for public sympathy: the effort to remove a wrongdoer cannot safely be reduced to the resolve of a lone actor. Without support, the person confronting corruption is left without the means the judgment treats as essential.

Interpretation and Limits

The commentary reads the hexagram through the relation between its overall figure and its individual lines. The seasonal image supplies the larger political pattern—good order pressing forward against a final remnant of corruption—while the line passages test how that change is pursued. The first line’s failure shows that righteous purpose alone does not ensure success; the second makes appeal and support part of sound conduct; the sixth shows the peril of having no allies. Together, they make the hexagram’s advice conditional rather than triumphalist: advance is favorable only when disclosure, preparation, legitimate purpose, and collective support accompany it.

This reading belongs to the translator’s account of the text as symbolically expressed political and moral teaching, not to an unambiguous narrative of a particular historical campaign. The translator’s broader method is to render the ideas he believes the symbolic characters convey rather than reproduce their arrangement as a literal word-for-word version; he describes the translator’s task as expressing the original meaning as exactly and concisely as possible, sometimes supplying words that indicate what the writer’s thought leaves implicit. In this instance, the commentary gives the image a pointed political application while preserving the hexagram’s practical warning: removing a corrupt power is dangerous, and the manner of acting determines whether the effort can succeed.