The second line of Nourishment is refused twice over. Legge's translation reads it as looking downward for nourishment, which is contrary to what is proper, and then as turning to the mound on high, with evil following if the subject goes forward on that footing. The commentary on the image says that the subject acts contrary to his proper class, and the phrase is the key to the whole line. The fault is not the seeking but the direction of it, first below where a superior should not beg, then above where this line has nobody answering.
Structurally the stroke is yielding in an even place, correct by the ordinary rule, and central in the lower trigram Zhen. Almost anywhere else that combination would earn approval. Here it does not, because a hexagram about nourishment measures a line by its relationships rather than by its placement alone, and this line has none it can properly draw on. The fifth place above it is yielding too, so no correspondence exists to feed it, while the strong first line beneath belongs to a station it ought not to be soliciting.
Read within the mouth the whole figure draws, this is the position of a jaw that opens in every direction and closes on nothing. The line is not condemned for hunger, which the hexagram treats as ordinary and unremarkable, but for a hunger that will take support from anywhere and therefore secures none. Its misfortune follows from movement without a proper object, which is what the trigram Zhen, thunder and arousal, produces when it has nowhere correct to go.