The Ram, the Fence, and the Horns That Catch

The third line is where Great Power meets the thing that stops it. Legge's translation contrasts a small man who uses all his strength with a superior man whose rule is not to, calls the position perilous even under firm correctness, and supplies the image the hexagram is remembered for: a ram butting against a fence and getting its horns entangled. The animal is not defeated. It is stuck, by the same horns that made the charge possible.

Small man and superior man are the classic's own pair, a judgement of character stated in the social vocabulary of the period, and they are given here as the text gives them. What the contrast is being used to establish is not who a person is but what they do with a full measure of strength. The small man in the line is defined by the spending of it, and the superior man by holding a rule against spending it, so the whole distinction turns on conduct rather than on standing.

The stroke is strong in an odd place, correct by the ordinary rule, and it stands at the top of the lower trigram Qian directly beneath the thunder trigram Zhen. That is three firm lines stacked with more force immediately above, and it marks the point where the accumulated power of the lower trigram runs into something. Correctness of position is exactly what makes the line dangerous, because a line entitled to act is the one most likely to.