Following, Line 4

The fourth line is the one place in Following where being followed becomes dangerous. Legge's translation shows its subject followed and obtaining adherents, says that even though he be firm and correct there will be evil, and then supplies the way out: sincerity in his course, and clear intelligence about it, leave him free from error. The sequence is deliberate. The danger is stated before the remedy, and it is not removed by being in the right.

A strong stroke stands in an even place at the base of the upper trigram Dui, incorrectly positioned by the rule and, more to the point, directly beneath the ruling fifth line. A minister who attracts a personal following in that position has created a second centre inside a structure that has only one seat, and the classical reading of the evil here is not that his conduct is bad but that his situation is ambiguous, which is a different and less curable problem.

Sincerity and clarity answer the ambiguity rather than the conduct. What makes a following beneath a ruler dangerous is that nobody can see what it is for, and that unseen purposes get supplied by whoever is watching. The remedy the line names is therefore visibility: an openly declared aim, a course that can be examined, nothing held back that would change the reading if it came out. On those terms the adherents stop being a rival centre and become simply the work being done.

Nine in the fourth place answers a querent who has acquired influence in a place where someone else holds the authority. People are coming to them rather than to the person formally responsible, and the reading treats this as a genuine hazard rather than a compliment. The line's most useful move is its insistence that being in the right will not protect them, since the difficulty is structural and not a matter of whether their conduct has been correct.

The remedy given is practical and can be applied directly. Make the purpose of the influence explicit, to the person in authority above all, and conduct it where it can be seen. A querent in this position is often tempted to say nothing, on the reasonable ground that they have done nothing wrong and that raising it would create the very suspicion they want to avoid. The line advises the opposite, because an unexplained following is read by others, and what they read into it will not be generous.

There is a second implication worth drawing out in a reading. Adherents who have attached themselves to a person rather than to the work are the specific risk, so the counsel includes redirecting them: crediting the shared aim, routing decisions through the proper seat, declining the role of alternative leader when it is offered. Handled that way the line ends in no blame at all, but the text is clear that this outcome has to be worked for.