X. Why Change Is Made Manifest Between Image and Shape

"In Heaven images are formed, on Earth shapes are formed; thus change is made visible." Change is "made visible" precisely because there is difference between before and after, correspondence between one thing and another. The moon waxes and wanes; the sun rises and sets; cold and heat come and go; grasses and trees flourish and wither; mountains and marshes exchange their vapors; thunder and wind press against one another. If Heaven and Earth showed nothing at all, change could not be known; if the myriad things never took shape at all, change would have no way to be verified either. Image lets a person see what is coming; shape lets a person see what has been accomplished. From image to shape, and from shape giving rise to new image once more -- the transformation of Heaven and Earth unfolds before human eyes.

Change is not the arbitrary substitution of one thing for another, but the shifting of a thing within its relations. A seed enters the soil and, given rain, dew, and warmth, sprouts; the young shoot grows, and in time bears fruit. Every step has its prior cause and what it waits upon, and gives rise in turn to a new form. A person, within all this, cannot claim to create the myriad things, but can only assist their transformation and growth. Sowing, weeding, and irrigating can help bring things to completion, but cannot command a seed to ripen before its season; governance and moral instruction can guide the people, but cannot disregard hunger and cold and seek order through empty words alone. One who understands change knows both how to exert effort and how to wait.

The Zhuangzi speaks at length of the transformation of things (wu hua) -- dream and waking, life and death, this and that, right and wrong all flowing and shifting into one another -- with the intent of breaking a person's habit of taking one momentary view as eternal. Yet the transformation of things does not mean denying all difference whatsoever. Precisely because there is a distinction between this and that can there be a transformation of this into that; precisely because shape has been formed can shape be transformed. What Master Zhuang warns against is a person taking a temporarily formed standpoint as the whole of the Way, and thereby falling into endless argument that harms life and injures nature. The Yi likewise does not let a person cling to any single hexagram or line as a permanent situation. Peace (Tai) can turn into Obstruction (Pi); even after Already Fulfilled (Jiji), there remains Not Yet Fulfilled (Weiji); flourishing and decline depend on one another, order and disorder lie hidden within each other.

The Confucian discussion of change places still greater weight on how a person, amid change, holds to correctness and forms virtue. The Master said, "That which passes is like this, is it not -- never ceasing day or night," and the ceaseless flowing water makes a person feel time itself in motion; yet this sigh is no despondency, but an urging to advance in virtue while there is still time. Not a single moment of the years ever pauses; if a person does not learn, ingrained habit too accumulates day by day; if a person can renew himself daily, virtue and achievement likewise accumulate day by day. Change itself does not guarantee movement toward the good; it only shows that one cannot remain forever in the same place. Which direction one changes toward depends on the kind one draws close to, the habits one returns to, and the resolve one establishes.

Master Meng said, "The spring at its source gushes on, never ceasing day or night; it fills every hollow before advancing further, and reaches at last the four seas" -- using water that has a source to illustrate the advance of virtue. Water flows without ceasing, and yet it must fill every pit and hollow before continuing forward; it does not overleap, does not vault emptily ahead. Here constancy and change are present at once: that the source never runs dry is constancy; that it advances according to the terrain is change; heading toward the sea is its direction; filling each hollow before advancing is its sequence. Learning that seeks only novelty and is unwilling to fill in the work at hand is water without a source; integrity that clings only to old traces and does not know how to accord with the changes of the time likewise cannot reach the four seas.

Political change likewise must have its source. Institutions may be adjusted, added to or reduced, according to the time, but such adjustment is not to be done arbitrarily. The Master, discussing how the Zhou followed the ritual of the Shang and the Shang followed the ritual of the Xia, and how what was added and reduced can be known, shows that ritual institutions both carry on a continuity and undergo adaptation. Continuity keeps the great root of human relations from falling away; adaptation keeps the regulated forms fitting for the present age. If one discards everything old wholesale, the people lose what they depend on; if one changes not a single word, ritual may become detached from actual circumstance. Change is made visible in image and shape; wisdom is formed through continuity and reform.