The Headboard Fitted to the Young Bull Before the Horns Grow

Restraint becomes gentle at the fourth position. Legge's translation shows a young bull already fitted with the piece of wood set across its horns, and promises great good fortune. The animal is not yet dangerous, and that is precisely why the fitting works: a horn board applied before the strength behind it has grown requires no struggle and leaves no injury.

This is a yielding line correctly placed in an even position at the foot of the upper trigram Gen, the restraining mountain itself, and it stands in correspondence with the strong opening line far below. The pairing is exact. What the first position experienced as a peril to be halted, the fourth applies from above as a small early intervention, and the text rates the result among the most fortunate anywhere in the hexagram.

The principle is one of timing rather than of force. Great Taming holds enormous creative energy in check, and this line shows the cheapest moment at which such holding can be done. A restraint fitted early shapes what grows into it; the same restraint attempted later becomes a contest. The great good fortune promised here belongs to the earliness rather than to any severity in the measure itself. Nothing in the line is harsh, and the tradition treats that gentleness as evidence of good timing rather than of leniency.