Dispersion

Dispersion is the hexagram of minds estranged from what is right and good, and of the political disorder that can follow when alienation spreads through a community. Its decisive argument is that dispersal can be remedied: sincere observance, responsible government, and cooperation between ruler, minister, and people can gather those divided, while action must remain firm and correct.

Meaning and Structure

The name refers to dissipation or dispersion, first of people’s minds and then, by consequence, of order in the commonwealth. The image is wind moving over water: the wind appears to disperse the water, making the natural scene an emblem of social dissolution. The hexagram’s language therefore treats disorder as more than a public crisis. It begins in a loss of attachment to what is right and good, and becomes a condition in which people are separated from one another as well as from sound principle.

The judgment promises progress and success, but does not present recovery as automatic. It says that the king goes to the ancestral temple, that crossing the great stream will be advantageous, and that firmness and correctness are necessary. The commentary connects success with strong lines occupying the central places of the figure. It then interprets the royal visit as an act of filial piety whose sincerity moves the ancestral spirits. In the commentary’s ethical reading, sincere religion can rule people’s minds and so counter alienation both from what is right and good and from one another. The hazardous crossing, meanwhile, represents the possibility of undertaking a great enterprise when the condition of the country demands it; such action remains subject to the requirement of right conduct.

A Sequence of Remedies

The line commentary turns the broad diagnosis into a progression of responses. At the beginning, the evil has not yet advanced far, so it remains comparatively easy to address. But the first line’s subject is weak and cannot meet the danger alone; help comes through the strong second line, represented by the strong horse. The image makes assistance, rather than solitary effort, the condition of early success.

The second line is strong but occupies an even place, and its position in the lower trigram, associated with peril, makes action dangerous. Instead of pressing forward alone, its subject looks to the first line below and takes shelter in union with its subject. The commentary, following Cheng Yi’s interpretation, thus presents alliance as a way to meet danger: strength does not make isolated action safe, but can help secure a protective relation.

The third line raises a different risk. Its subject is weak and in an odd place, so self-regard might prevent any contribution to the work of the hexagram. Instead, the subject casts that concern aside and acts without incurring regret. The commentary highlights a change in the Chinese text’s style at this point and cites Wang Shanzhi’s formulation of the turn: from here onward, what ought to be dispersed is dispersed so that what ought not to be dispersed can be gathered. Dispersion is therefore not treated as uniformly harmful. Breaking up the wrong attachments can be part of restoring the right ones.

Minister and Ruler

The fourth line gives the repair effort a political agent. Though weak, it occupies its proper place and adjoins the strong fifth line in the ruler’s seat. The commentary accordingly identifies its subject with a minister, whose role is to do a substantial part of the work of remedying dispersion. He ends dissentient partisanship and goes further: he collects those who had been divided into a great body, conspicuous like a hill. The sequence distinguishes two tasks—ending factional separation and building a visible unity from those formerly split apart.

The fifth line presents the ruler’s own contribution: proclamations and benevolence. The commentary discusses the image of perspiration, noting that Zhu Xi and other critics considered its symbolism significant. It also records competing translations: Philippe Grégoire Regis renders the phrase as a ruler dispersing great laws so that they penetrate, while Canon McClatchie compares proclamations curing rebellion to sweat curing fevers. The author judges that both translators miss the meaning of another instance of the king’s work, and the line’s interpretation thus remains tied to the combined force of public pronouncement and benevolent rule rather than to a single explanatory image.

Withdrawal and the Limits of Association

At the top of the hexagram, the strong sixth line has a proper correlate in the third, but the third stands at the top of the trigram of peril. The subject of the sixth line hurries away from association with the third. This separation is not condemned: because it accords with the spirit of the hexagram, it brings no error or blame. The ending completes the commentary’s distinction between destructive division and necessary separation. Just as the third line must disperse what prevents proper gathering, the sixth may withdraw from an association that carries danger.

Textual and Divinatory Context

The hexagram’s treatment of social disorder appears within a book whose text and later interpretive materials the translator insists should be distinguished. He dates the older text to King Wen and the Duke of Zhou, while treating the Appendixes as later works, probably from the period after Confucius, and rejects the assumption that the two bodies of writing form one homogeneous composition. In common editions, five Appendixes were broken up and printed alongside the text; in his account, that intermixture made it harder for foreign students to grasp the text by blending ideas from different periods. The imperial Kangxi edition instead printed the two parts separately, although many critics continued to regard them as a unified work and attribute the Appendixes to Confucius.

That distinction matters to the discussion of divination. The translator describes divination as an early Chinese practice, using both tortoise shell and plant stalks, but stresses that the Yijing was consulted to assess whether contemplated plans and conditions would turn out luckily or unluckily—not to establish future events absolutely. The described stalk procedure used forty-nine stalks, manipulated three times for each line, for eighteen manipulations in all to form a hexagram. Odd and even numbers determined strong and weak lines; once the figure had been made, interpretation turned to King Wen’s judgments and the Duke of Zhou’s line statements. Numbers served to form the figure, not as independent entities that caused or disclosed every occurrence in nature. Read against this account, Dispersion’s judgment is not a warrant for fatalistic prediction: it sets out ethical and political conditions for confronting division, and makes firmness, correctness, and deliberate remedies central to the prospect of success.