VI. The Distinguishing of the Firm and the Yielding: Not a Contest of Strong and Weak, but a Discernment of Function

Once movement and stillness have their constancy, the firm and the yielding can be distinguished. The firm and the yielding are not good and evil predetermined by moral judgment, nor are they a crude classification that assigns firmness to men in general and yielding to women in general. The firm has the function of deciding, advancing, standing fast, and opening the way; the yielding has the function of receiving, cultivating, according with, and bringing to completion. The firm without the yielding snaps; the yielding without the firm collapses. A bow can loose an arrow because its material has both strength and resilience, and because the body of the bow can bend; a cart can move because its hub is sturdy, and because its turning is smooth and free. That the vessels of the world come to completion is so often precisely because the firm and the yielding assist one another.

To "distinguish" (duan) is to discern clearly. Faced with a matter, one must first discern whether its configuration leans toward the firm or toward the yielding, whether firmness or yielding is called for. If treachery runs rampant and one only keeps yielding, then yielding becomes cowardice; if the people's strength is exhausted and one only keeps pressing, then firmness becomes tyranny. To hold to righteousness without turning back is firmness; to remonstrate with a gentle countenance is yielding. To face great difficulty without losing one's resolve is firmness; to be able to accept the words of those who differ from oneself is yielding. Both can be present at once, in one person, in one matter. True firmness is not afraid to listen; true yielding does not abandon principle.

The Doctrine of the Mean says, "To be in harmony without being swept along -- how firm and unyielding! To stand in the center without leaning to either side -- how firm and unyielding!" To be in harmony without being swept along is precisely firmness within yielding: able to be in harmony with others, yet not losing one's hold by following the current; able to stand in the center, yet not changing one's resolve out of isolation. Master Meng, discussing the great man, said that wealth and rank cannot corrupt him, poverty and low station cannot move him, force and might cannot bend him -- displaying the firmness of virtuous character. And yet his saying that "one who subdues others through virtue makes their hearts rejoice and truly submit" refuses to press others through mere force. Firmness of virtue is not the same as harshness of method. The more genuine one's inner integrity, the less one needs to intimidate others with voice and countenance; the less genuine one's inner conviction, the more one tends to love hiding behind outward show of force.

The Most High, by contrast, often sees strength precisely in what is soft and weak. Water is utterly yielding, and yet it can overcome the hard; grasses and trees are soft and fragile while alive, withered and stiff when dead; a strong army does not always win, a strong tree is felled together with others. This does not teach a person to retreat forever, but reveals that when firmness and strength are carried to the extreme, they lose all room to turn and all springs of life. The yielding lets a thing bear change, go around obstruction, and preserve itself. If the Way of Qian and Kun retained only vigor and firmness, the myriad things would have no way to receive life; if it retained only compliance and yielding, the myriad things would have no way to begin. The Most High's valuing of the yielding does not contradict the Yi's meaning of the firm and the yielding rubbing against one another -- both oppose clinging to a single extreme.

When Master Xun discusses ritual propriety and righteousness, he often displays a vigorous, firm power of regulation. Human desires are boundless, while material goods are limited; if one follows desire without regulation, contention is inevitable. Ritual propriety and righteousness set the boundaries, so that communal life can be accomplished. This is distinguishing, this is establishing a boundary. And yet ritual propriety also has the side of nourishing desire and supplying its demands, and is not merely a prohibition that whittles a person down. Food and drink have their regulated forms, mourning and sacrifice have their forms of feeling, noble and humble have their gradations -- so that desire finds its nourishment without contending, and feeling finds its expression without running into disorder. This is precisely the joint use of the firm and the yielding: having boundaries, so that there is no disorder; having nourishing form, so that there is no withering.

Only when the firm and the yielding can be distinguished does fortune and misfortune have grounds for judgment. If firmness is used where yielding is called for, or yielding where firmness is called for, this runs against time and position; if firmness attains the mean and yielding attains correctness, one can accomplish things. Hence the firmness and yielding within the hexagrams and lines must always be set back into the relations of time and position. A firm line in a firm position is not necessarily always fortunate; a yielding line in a yielding position is not necessarily always fortunate either -- one must also see whether it attains the center, whether it accords with the moment, whether what it rides upon and what it carries are fitting. The subtlety of the Yi lies precisely in never absolutizing a single virtue. Every force must accord with the whole; every virtue must be realized within its actual situation.