Climbing station by station, the hexagram ends at the mouth. Legge's translation shows the subject moving his jaws and tongue, and the commentary on the image dismisses the whole performance in a phrase: he only talks with volubility. No verdict of fortune or misfortune is attached, which puts this line in the same category as the first, and the parallel is instructive. At the toe there was not yet anything to judge; at the mouth there is nothing left to judge either.
The figure has climbed a body from the extremity upward and the mouth is the top of it. Everything below has been some form of being moved: a toe stirring, calves ready to walk, thighs gripping a leader, a restless mind, a numb stretch of back. Arriving at speech, the classic finds an influence converted entirely into words and treats that conversion as the end of its real force rather than as its culmination.
The stroke is yielding in an even seat, correct by the ordinary rule, at the top of the upper trigram Dui. Dui is the lake and its attribute is pleased satisfaction, which expresses itself as speech, so a soft line at its summit is that quality carried to an extreme. The line is not accused of dishonesty anywhere in the text. It is accused of volubility, of a mouth doing on its own what the whole body was supposed to be doing together.