Chapter One: Ze — The Hidden Textures of the World

I. Philology and Semantic Field of the Character Ze

Ze (赜, ze), remarkably, is not found in Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi. This itself is noteworthy. When Xu Shen compiled the Shuowen, he canvassed pre-Qin texts exhaustively — why would he have omitted this character$9 One possibility is that ze was not a commonly used character in the pre-Qin period; it appears primarily within the Yi Zhuan (commentarial tradition), recurring throughout the Xi Ci Zhuan:

"The sage has the means to perceive the profundity (ze) of all under heaven." (Xi Ci Shang, Chapter 8) "It speaks of what is supremely profound (zhi ze) under heaven, yet one cannot find it repugnant." (Xi Ci Shang, Chapter 8, later passage) "Probing the profound and searching the hidden, hooking the deep and reaching the distant." (Xi Ci Shang, Chapter 10)

The character is composed of "red" (chi) and "page/head" (ye) — or in some versions, "red" and "shell/cowrie" (bei). Ma Rong glossed it: "Ze means tangled and disordered." Yu Fan glossed it: "Ze means deep." Han Kangbo commented: "Ze refers to principles that are recondite and difficult to perceive." Kong Yingda's Zheng Yi (Correct Meaning) elaborated: "Ze means the utmost principles, recondite and profoundly remote."

These several glosses, though seemingly divergent, can in fact be unified. The sense of "tangled and disordered" refers to the multitudinous complexity of all things under heaven — on the surface, myriad phenomena arise with no fixed order, like tangled silk or dense stars. The sense of "recondite and deep" conveys that beneath this welter of appearances there exists a deeper order not readily captured by the senses. Taken together, the full meaning of ze should be understood as: the intricate, recondite, and difficult-to-perceive inner textures of the myriad things of the world.

This understanding is crucial. Ze is not simply "complexity," nor simply "hiddenness" — it is hiddenness within complexity, and order within hiddenness. Precisely because there is an order to be found, the sage is able to "perceive" it; precisely because this order is concealed, it requires a sage to do so.

II. Why "Perceive" (Jian) Rather Than "Know" (Zhi)$10

The text says "the sage has the means to perceive (jian) the profundity of all under heaven," using the character jian (见) rather than zhi (知). This choice is by no means accidental.

Jian in ancient pre-Qin Chinese means most basically "what the eye reaches." The Shuowen says: "Jian means to see; from 'person' and 'eye.'" It points to an intuitive, immediate, embodied mode of cognition, rather than the result of abstract reasoning.

Compare the character zhi (知). Zhi is composed of "arrow" and "mouth," its original meaning connected to speech and judgment, extending to rational cognition and conceptual grasp. In the Lunyu (Analects), the Master says, "To know what you know and know what you do not know — that is true knowing" (zhi zhi wei zhi zhi, bu zhi wei bu zhi, shi zhi ye) — here zhi already inclines toward rational judgment.

That the Xi Ci Zhuan uses jian here emphasizes: the sage's grasp of the world's profundity is, in the first instance, not a process of logical deduction but one of "intuitive insight." This kind of "seeing" was later developed in Wei-Jin metaphysics into "embodied recognition" (tiren) and "silent accord" (minghui), and in Chan Buddhism into "seeing one's nature" (jianxing). But in the primordial context of the pre-Qin, it is closer to a highly refined power of observation — the sage gazes at the heavens, examines the earth, takes from what is near at hand in his own person and from what is distant in other things, and through deep contemplation of the myriad phenomena, "perceives" the order concealed beneath them.

The Xi Ci Xia Zhuan (Lower Section) preserves the classic narrative of this process:

"In ancient times, when Bao Xi (Fu Xi) ruled all under heaven, he gazed upward to observe the images in the heavens, looked downward to examine the patterns of the earth, observed the markings of birds and beasts and what suited the terrain, took from what was near at hand in his own person and from what was distant in other things — and thereupon first created the eight trigrams, in order to penetrate the virtue of the numinous and the bright, and to classify the natures of all things."

This passage is the finest gloss on "the sage has the means to perceive the profundity of all under heaven." What Fu Xi did was "gaze upward and examine below" — that is, "perceive." What he perceived was "the profundity of all under heaven" (tianxia zhi ze) — those deep textures concealed within celestial phenomena, terrestrial patterns, birds, beasts, and grasses.

III. "Perceiving" in High Antiquity: Visual Culture from Oracle Bone to Bronze Inscriptions

If we extend our view further back to high antiquity, the significance of jian becomes richer still.

The character jian in oracle-bone script is written as a human figure with a greatly enlarged, prominently emphasized eye. The graph itself tells us that for the people of high antiquity, "seeing" was invested with extraordinary significance. In the animistic thinking of that age, "seeing" was not merely a physical process but a kind of spiritual encounter — to "see" something meant that a connection had been established between you and that thing.

In oracle-bone divination records, jian appears frequently — "The king saw a great star," "A rainbow was seen from the north" — recording what were deemed mystically portentous sightings. In this context, jian itself carried the connotation of "receiving heaven's intent."

Therefore, when the Xi Ci Zhuan says "the sage has the means to perceive the profundity of all under heaven," the character jian on its archaic semantic stratum denotes not merely "seeing" but "apprehending" — "encountering the hidden order of heaven and earth." This encounter requires extraordinary capacity — hence the subject is "the sage," not ordinary people.

IV. The Nuance of "Has the Means" (You Yi)

You yi (有以) is a common pre-Qin phrase meaning "has the method," "possesses the means." In Zhuangzi's "Nourishing the Lord of Life," Cook Ding explains: "What your servant cares about is the Way, which goes beyond mere skill" (chen zhi suo hao zhe dao ye, jin hu ji yi). Cook Ding's ability to "encounter with the spirit rather than see with the eyes" is precisely because he "has the means" (you yi) — he possesses a distinctive method and cultivation.

"The sage has the means to perceive the profundity of all under heaven" — the sage possesses method; he does not conjecture from thin air or guess at random, but follows a complete system of observation and thought. This system is what the subsequent text calls "gazing upward and examining below," "taking from what is near and what is far." But at a deeper level, you yi implies a state of cultivation — only one who has attained the sage's level of attainment "has the means" to perceive what ordinary people cannot.

This calls to mind the first chapter of the Laozi (the Most High):

"In constant nonbeing, one desires to observe its subtleties; in constant being, one desires to observe its boundaries." (Chang wu, yu yi guan qi miao; chang you, yu yi guan qi jiao.)

The "observing" (guan) of the Most High and the "perceiving" (jian) of the Xi Ci Zhuan are essentially kindred: both are modes of deep intuition transcending ordinary sensory perception. The Most High emphasizes observing from a state of "nonbeing" to perceive the "subtlety" (miao) — the delicate roots of all things; the Xi Ci Zhuan emphasizes that only the "sage" has the means to perceive "profundity" (ze) — the hidden textures of the world. Both point toward the same epistemological proposition: the deepest reality requires the highest cognition to reach.