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13. Fellowship with Men

䷌
Above
乾 qián
The Creative, Heaven
Below
離 lí
The Clinging, Flame

The image of the upper tri­gram Ch’ien is heav­en, and that of the lower, Li, is flame. It is the na­ture of fire to flame up to heav­en. This gives the idea of fel­low­ship. It is the sec­ond line that, by virtue of its cen­tral char­ac­ter, unites the five strong lines around it. This hexa­gram forms a com­ple­ment to Shih, THE army. In the lat­ter, dan­ger is with­in and obe­di­ence with­out—the char­ac­ter of a war­like army, which, in order to hold to­geth­er, needs one strong man among the many who are weak. Here, clar­i­ty is with­in and strength with­out—the char­ac­ter of a peace­ful union of men, which, in order to hold to­geth­er, needs one yield­ing na­ture among many firm per­sons.

The Judgement

Fellowship with men in the open.
Success.
It furthers one to cross the great water.
The perseverance of the superior man furthers.

True fel­low­ship among men must be based upon a con­cern that is uni­ver­sal. It is not the pri­vate in­ter­ests of the in­di­vid­ual that cre­ate last­ing fel­low­ship among men, but rather the goals of hu­man­i­ty. That is why it is said that fel­low­ship with men in the open suc­ceeds. If unity of this kind pre­vails, even dif­fi­cult and dan­ger­ous tasks, such as cross­ing the great water, can be ac­com­plished. But in order to bring about this sort of fel­low­ship, a per­se­ver­ing and en­light­ened leader is need­ed— 13- T’ung Jen / Fel­low­ship with Men a man with clear, con­vinc­ing, and in­spir­ing aims and the strength to carry them out. (The inner tri­gram means clar­i­ty; the outer, strength.)

The Image

Heaven together with fire:
The image of fellowship with men.
Thus the superior man organizes the clans
And makes distinctions between things.

Heav­en has the same di­rec­tion of move­ment as fire, yet it is dif­fer­ent from fire. Just as the lu­mi­nar­ies in the sky serve for the sys­tem­at­ic di­vi­sion and arrange­ment of time, so human so­ci­ety and all things that re­al­ly be­long to­geth­er must be or­gan­i­cal­ly arranged. Fel­low­ship should not be a mere min­gling of in­di­vid­u­als or of things—that would be chaos, not fel­low­ship. If fel­low­ship is to lead to order, there must be or­ga­ni­za­tion with­in di­ver­si­ty.

The Lines

Nine at the beginning means:
Fellowship with men at the gate.
No blame.

The be­gin­ning of union among peo­ple should take place be­fore the door. All are equal­ly close to one an­oth­er. No di­ver­gent aims have yet arisen, and one makes no mis­takes. The basic prin­ci­ples of any kind of union must be equal­ly ac­ces­si­ble to all con­cerned. Se­cret agree­ments bring mis­for­tune.

Six in the second place means:
Fellowship with men in the clan.
Humiliation.

There is dan­ger here of for­ma­tion of a sep­a­rate fac­tion on the basis of per­son­al and ego­tis­tic in­ter­ests. Such fac­tions, which are ex­clu­sive and, in­stead of wel­com­ing all men, must con­demn one group in order to unite the oth­ers, orig­i­nate from low mo­tives and there­fore lead in the course of time to hu­mil­i­a­tion.

Nine in the third place means:
He hides weapons in the thicket;
He climbs the high hill in front of it.
For three years he does not rise up

Here fel­low­ship has changed about to mis­trust. Each man dis­trusts the other, plans a se­cret am­bush, and seeks to spy on his fel­low from afar. We are deal­ing with an ob­sti­nate op­po­nent whom we can­not come at by this method. Ob­sta­cles stand­ing in the way of fel­low­ship with oth­ers are shown here. One has men­tal reser­va­tions for one’s own part and seeks to take his op­po­nent by sur­prise. This very fact makes one mis­trust­ful, sus­pect­ing the same wiles in his op­po­nent and try­ing to fer­ret them out. The re­sult is that one de­parts fur­ther and fur­ther from true fel­low­ship. The longer this goes on, the more alien­at­ed one be­comes.

Nine in the fourth place means:
He climbs up on his wall; he cannot attack.
Good fortune.

Here the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion that fol­lows quar­rel moves near­er. It is true that there are still di­vid­ing walls on which we stand con­fronting one an­oth­er. But the dif­fi­cul­ties are too great. We get into straits, and this brings us to our sens­es. We can­not fight, and there­in lies our good for­tune.

Nine in the fifth place means:
Men bound in fellowship first weep and lament,
But afterward they laugh.
After great struggles they succeed in meeting.

Two peo­ple are out­ward­ly sep­a­rat­ed, but in their hearts they are unit­ed. They are kept apart by their po­si­tions in life. Many dif­fi­cul­ties and ob­struc­tions arise be­tween them and cause them grief. But, re­main­ing true to each other, they allow noth­ing to sep­a­rate them, and al­though it costs them a se­vere strug­gle to over­come the ob­sta­cles, they will suc­ceed. When they come to­geth­er their sad­ness will change to joy. Con­fu­cius says of this: “Life leads the thought­ful man on a path of many wind­ings. Now the course is checked, now it runs straight again. Here winged thoughts may pour freely forth in words, There the heavy bur­den of knowl­edge must be shut away in si­lence. But when two peo­ple are at one in their in­most hearts, They shat­ter even the strength of iron or of bronze. And when two peo­ple un­der­stand each other in their in­most hearts, Their words are sweet and strong, like the fra­grance of or­chids.”

Nine at the top means:
Fellowship with men in the meadow.
No remorse.

The warm at­tach­ment that springs from the heart is lack­ing here. We are by this time ac­tu­al­ly out­side of fel­low­ship with oth­ers. How­ev­er, we ally our­selves with them. The fel­low­ship does not in­clude all, but only those who hap­pen to dwell near one an­oth­er. The mead­ow is the pas­ture at the en­trance to the town. At this stage, the ul­ti­mate goal of the union of mankind has not yet been at­tained, but we need not re­proach our­selves. We join the com­mu­ni­ty with­out sep­a­rate aims of our own.