Enthusiasm, Line 2

Against a hexagram given over to mood, the second line offers stone. Legge's translation calls its subject firm as a rock, says he does not wait until the end of the day, and attaches good fortune to firm correctness. Two virtues are combined in a single stroke, and they are usually thought of as opposites: immovability, and speed. The line is unmoved by the enthusiasm around it and, for exactly that reason, sees where the enthusiasm is going before anyone caught up in it can.

Yielding in an even place, central in the lower trigram Kun, this is the only line in Enthusiasm that is correct and central at once. Kun is the receptive earth, and the second position is where its stability concentrates. The classical reading attached to this line concerns perceiving the first faint indications of a thing while it is still forming, and the reason such perception is possible here is structural rather than mystical: a line that is not being carried along can still see the current.

Not waiting until the day is out is the practical half of the line. Perception without timing would be commentary, and the text is not describing an observer. Having read the situation early, this line acts on the reading early, before the mood has hardened into a position that would be expensive to leave. Firmness and quickness turn out to be the same virtue seen from two sides, and the good fortune promised belongs to holding both.

A querent drawing six in the second place is generally surrounded by a collective feeling, an office consensus, a market mood, a family expectation, and is being told that their advantage lies in not sharing it. The reading is favourable and rests on two instructions that must be taken together. Stay unmoved by the enthusiasm, and act on what that detachment lets you see, without letting the day go by first.

The value of the position is that it is central and correct in a hexagram where almost nothing else is. Whatever the querent perceives about the situation is likely to be accurate, and the reading gives unusual licence to trust an early impression that others do not yet share. What it does not licence is arguing the point. This line persuades nobody and attempts nothing collective; it simply declines to be moved, and moves itself in good time.

The failure mode is delay, which is why the text bothers to specify that the day is not waited out. An accurate reading of a situation loses its value the moment everyone else reaches it, and a querent who sees early and waits for confirmation ends up acting on the same information as everyone else, at the same time, at a worse price. Perception is treated here as something with an expiry, and the good fortune belongs to acting while it is still worth something.