The I Ching

The Master said, “If some years were added to my life, I would give fifty to the study of the Yih, and then I might come to be without great faults.” [Confucian Analects, 7.16]

The Yî is both a book and a system (The I Ching) “that is intended to represent the changing phenomena of nature and experience.”

The Yî is the 3rd oldest of the Chinese classics, predating Confucius.

Legge, in his preface to the Shû, writes: —

Confucius himself set a high value on it (the Yî), as being fitted to correct and perfect the character of the learner.

King Wăn, we are told, at a time when he was imprisoned by the tyrannical sovereign with whom the dynasty of Shang or Yin ended, took in hand the ever-changing hexagrams, and appended to each a brief explanation of the meaning which the trigrams composing it suggested by their union to his mind; and in some cases the practical course in affairs to which that meaning should direct.

His son did for the separate lines of each hexagram what Wăn had done for the whole figure.

The work was from the first intimately connected with the practice of divination, which, we know from the Shû, entered largely into the religion of the ancient Chinese.

This goes far to account for its obscure and enigmatical character; but at the same time there occur in it, though in a fragmentary manner, so many metaphysical, physical, moral, and religious utterances, that the student of it is gradually brought under a powerful fascination.