The second line states a loss without arguing about it. Legge's translation shows its subject cleaving to the little boy and letting go the man of age and experience, and stops there. No misfortune is pronounced and no remedy is offered. The whole force of the line is in the second clause: the attachment to the lesser figure is not condemned in itself, but it is shown to have a price, and the price is the other relationship, which cannot be kept at the same time.
Yielding in an even place, central in the lower trigram Zhen, this line is correct by the positional rule, which makes the outcome all the more pointed. Correctness of placement does not save a line from choosing badly. What draws it is proximity: the strong first line sits immediately below, near and available, while the more substantial connection lies further off. Following, in this hexagram, moves toward whatever is closest unless something intervenes.
Read beside the third line, which reverses the choice exactly, this line supplies the negative half of a matched pair. The two together make the hexagram's sharpest structural point, that following is exclusive. Attachment is not a portfolio to be diversified, and the text declines to imagine a version in which both the little boy and the man of experience are kept. One is held, the other is let go, and the line is content to name which.