XVIII. From the Images of Heaven Back to Human Relations: "The Way of Qian Forms the Male, the Way of Kun Forms the Female"

After thunder and lightning, wind and rain, sun and moon, cold and heat, the text arrives at "the Way of Qian forms the male, the Way of Kun forms the female." This is not a sudden departure from the cosmos to speak of the family; it is precisely explaining how the transformation of Heaven and Earth is realized in the continuation of life. Male and female have never been two labels for isolated individuals, but together form a household within the relations of marriage, husband and wife, parent and child. The Way of Qian and Kun, moving from Heaven and Earth to the human body, makes ceaseless generation concrete as the continuation of the generations.

"Forming the male" and "forming the female" first of all mean coming-into-being, and should not be read merely as a matter of power and status, high or low. The male is formed through the Way of Qian, the female through the Way of Kun, each with its own image; but since Qian and Kun need each other, male and female likewise depend on each other. Without Kun, the great beginning of Qian has no way to bring anything to completion; without Qian, the completing of Kun has nothing to draw its origin from. To use the names of Qian and Kun merely to elevate one side and demean the other is to violate the very structure of rubbing and stirring, of mutual completion, that runs through the whole chapter. That the exalted and the lowly each have their place does not mean that one side can complete the world alone, apart from the other.

The Book of Songs opens with "Guanju," taking the correctness of husband and wife as the beginning of the transformation of the whole realm. The household is not some private sphere unrelated to the world at large. The closeness of father and son, the order of elder and younger brother, the distinction between husband and wife constitute the earliest place where a person learns love, responsibility, and deferential respect. A person who cannot fulfill his part within the household, yet hopes suddenly to become a loyal and trustworthy man at court, faces an extremely difficult task. Master Meng said that the root of all under Heaven lies in the state, the root of the state lies in the household, and the root of the household lies in the person -- likewise a sequence proceeding from the near to the far.

That husband and wife are distinguished does not mean they are separated, still less that they disdain one another. Distinction lets each side hold to its own responsibility; union lets the way of the household be established together. Pre-Qin ritual propriety and righteousness placed weight on the distinction between inner and outer, within a specific structure of life; to extract only the outward positions of power without seeing the mutual completion within them is to read Qian and Kun as a relation of domination. The virtue of Kun -- bearing all with depth, completing things, being capable through simplicity -- receives no lesser praise in this chapter than that of Qian. The text that follows even sets Qian and Kun side by side as the root of the worthy person's virtue and achievement, showing that neither Way can be dispensed with.

The temperament and capability of men and women cannot be exhausted by a single set of terms for the firm and the yielding. A woman, too, can hold to firm and unyielding integrity; a man, too, must have gentle and harmonious virtue. Qian and Kun are great images, not a mold that reduces every concrete person to the same shape. When the Master praised the worthy, he often praised them for combining firm resolve and plain sincerity with gentleness, kindness, reverence, frugality, and deference -- showing that the forming of virtue itself requires the harmonizing of many different qualities. If a man invokes the Way of Qian to justify recklessness and violence, this is no longer the vigor of Qian; if a woman is forced to invoke the Way of Kun to justify unprincipled submission, this too is no longer the compliance of Kun.

Looked at more deeply, every person's action contains both the aspect of Qian and the aspect of Kun. Setting one's resolve, initiating, and deciding are Qian; committing, carrying out, and nurturing are Kun. Qian without Kun produces many promises and little accomplishment; Kun without Qian produces a pile of tasks with no clear direction. For a household to generate life continuously, it needs both initiative and steadfastness; for a state to achieve lasting order, it needs both the establishment of institutions and their daily execution. The Way of Qian forming the male and the Way of Kun forming the female reveal the Way through the image of gender, without confining the Way within gender.