The fifth line supplies the hexagram's emotional and structural center. Legge's translation describes sincerity felt with dignified ease, and promises good fortune on the ground that the ruler of great possession commands through trustworthiness rather than force, inspiring awe without severity. Where the earlier lines proved capacity, generosity, and discretion, the fifth line names the quality that binds all three together: a ruler's sincerity, held easily rather than anxiously, that draws loyalty without ever needing to compel it.
This is the central line of the upper trigram Li, and though a yin line occupies an odd position here, a placement classical commentary treats as incorrect by the letter of the rule, centrality overrides that mismatch entirely: this is the ruling line of the whole hexagram, the single yielding stroke that every strong line around it defers to and is honored by. The pattern echoes what the second line of Fellowship with Men shows elsewhere in this same set of readings, a soft line trusted precisely because its placement asks nothing by force.
Read within the hexagram's full arc, the fifth line is where discretion below gives way to open, confident trust. Having distinguished what is one's own without display, the ruler of great possession can now simply be sincere, and that sincerity, dignified rather than anxious, is what the text credits with commanding awe no severity could purchase.