Disunion

Disunion names a social condition in which division and mutual alienation prevail, yet it is not presented as an absolute bar to effective action. Hexagram 38 locates the possibility of success in small matters: people who share a common virtue can still help one another, and limited acts of communication and cooperation may prepare the way for a broader repair.

Definition and Scope

The commentary describes Disunion as a state in which people are divided and alienated from one another. Its counsel is deliberately proportionate to that condition: small matters may go well even when the larger situation remains fractured. Healing begins locally, through relationships and actions that preserve some common ground, rather than through an assumption that the whole system can be restored at once.

The commentary distinguishes the hexagram’s account of social division from an interpretation based on family relations. It notes that the writers of Appendixes I and II explain the figure’s indication of division and disunion according to their own views. Appendix VI, by contrast, presents Disunion as a necessary sequel to the regulation of the family; the commentary finds no allusion to the family in the Text itself. This distinction keeps the reading focused on the stated condition of social alienation rather than treating a family framework as explicit textual evidence.

Cooperation Amid Division

The first line makes the possibility of cooperation concrete. Its subject loses his horses but is advised not to seek them; they will return of themselves. The commentary connects this image to the help available between people who share a common virtue: despite the prospects of disappointment and repentance suggested by the line’s position and its strong correlate in the fourth line, the good services of line four spare the subject that outcome. The lost horses’ return thus figures assistance arising within a divided society, not the immediate disappearance of division itself.

The same line advises the subject not to shrink from communicating with bad people if he meets them. The commentary explains that his good may overcome their evil and, at the least, silence their slanderous tongues. The counsel does not deny the difference between good and bad; it treats communication as a possible means of limiting harm and establishing practical benefit across that difference. In this account, cooperation in small matters is neither passive surrender nor proof that the wider disunion has ended.

The Path Toward Repair

The hexagram’s scale of action gives its teaching its particular force. Disunion remains the prevailing condition, but shared virtue can keep mutual aid possible. The commentary presents such local healing as preparation for curing the whole system: small successes matter because they preserve ties and make a larger remedy more conceivable, not because they instantly resolve the underlying estrangement.

This is a conditional hope rather than a promise of swift reconciliation. The text allows good success in limited matters while leaving the general state of division in place. Its emphasis falls on what remains workable within rupture: assistance, communication, and the restraint of slander. Through these modest forms of contact, Disunion is shown as serious but not wholly closed to repair.