IX. "In Heaven Images Are Formed, on Earth Shapes Are Formed": The Twofold World of Image and Form

What Heaven presents is mostly image: the rising and setting of sun and moon, the successive lodgings of the stars, the gathering and scattering of clouds and vapors, thunder and lightning, wind and rain. What Earth brings to completion is mostly shape: mountains, rivers, hills, and valleys; grasses, trees, birds, and beasts; implements and walled cities. Image can be gazed upon and its portent seen; shape can be trodden and its substance examined. Image inclines toward manifestation and guidance; shape inclines toward realization and accomplishment. The two are not two separate, sealed-off worlds. Heaven's images affect what grows upon the earth; Earth's shapes receive and bear the changes of Heaven's seasons. A person knows the time from Heaven's images, settles what is fitting from Earth's shapes, and labors and lives at the meeting-point of image and shape.

"Image" is no empty phantom. The sun rising in the east is an image, and it truly regulates the rhythm of rest and labor; the direction the Dipper's handle points is an image, and it corresponds to the turning of the year; clouds gathering and wind rising are an image, and may well foretell rain to come. What is distinctive about image is not that it lacks reality, but that it uses what is visible to signal an order not yet fully unfolded. Seeing leaves fall and knowing the year is drawing late, seeing ice first form and being on guard against severe cold, seeing the people voice grievance and knowing that governance has failed -- all of these are discerning a configuration through image. Shape, by contrast, is the result already congealed out of change: grain having formed its kernel, an implement having taken its finished form, a city wall already built, a punishment already carried out -- all of these have entered a state that can be touched and put to use.

The Book of Songs excels at observing image. The kite flying up to Heaven, the fish leaping in the deep, are not only about bird and fish, but make manifest the principle by which above and below flow into one another; the peach tree so tender and young is not only about blossom and tree, but is bound up with the flourishing of marriage and household; "wind and rain, dark as night, the cock's crowing never ceasing" makes tangible and felt the resolve to hold to constancy amid a disordered age. Though the comparison and evocation (bixing) of the Book of Songs and the image (xiang) of the Yi each have their own substance and function, neither suspends principle as empty words. The Way must manifest itself through what can be seen and felt, and the human heart, too, is moved by concrete images of things.

That the Master taught people to know widely the names of birds, beasts, grasses, and trees was not confining learning to the names of things, but was because if a person is utterly ignorant of the myriad things around him, the so-called Way of Heaven and Earth becomes mere empty talk. Birds, beasts, grasses, and trees are each born in their season and each have their own nature; to know them is to know the differences among the shapes formed upon the earth, and also to learn not to flatten the myriad things with one's own opinion. Ritual vessels, the colors of ceremonial dress, palace halls, chariots and banners are likewise shapes; they realize, in a form that can be enacted, the invisible closeness and distance, the honor and humility, the grief, reverence, and sincerity that would otherwise remain unseen. Without shape, intention has difficulty being conveyed and sustained; yet shape without sincerity becomes mere empty ornament once more.

The Most High said, "The great image has no shape" -- not denying image and shape, but saying that the greatest Way cannot be exhausted by any single fixed vessel or shape. The Way flows through the myriad things, and each thing manifests but one facet of it; no single thing can possess the whole. When the Yi sets up the hexagrams and observes their images, it likewise does not mean that the eight trigrams are the complete appearance of Heaven and Earth, but uses finite images to reach toward boundless change. To treat image as a dead, fixed symbol is to lose true observation; to abandon image altogether in seeking the Way is to have nowhere to stand. That the sages looked up and examined down was precisely a way of grasping the principle that runs through all things within concrete manifestation.

Image and shape also correspond to the before and after of human affairs. When intention first stirs, it is often seen first in one's countenance and manner of speech -- this is image; once decrees and institutions are established, merit, fault, benefit, and harm become concretely manifest -- this is shape. One skilled at observation knows the direction a thing is heading as soon as the image first appears, and need not wait, startled, until the bad result has already taken shape. Master Guiguzi placed great weight on speech, expression and voice, and response, using these to discern a person's hidden state -- this is precisely moving from image into substance. But observing image must not fall into mere suspicion; it must be corroborated by long-term conduct and actual results. A single expression, a single remark, is only a faint image; to judge arbitrarily on this basis is instead to be deceived by the image. Image must be traced through to shape, and shape must be traced back to its image; only when the two corroborate one another does judgment avoid bias.