Hexagram 48: The Well

Structure of the sign

Below is wood, above is water. The wood goes down into the earth to draw up the water. It is the image of the ancient Chinese sweep-well. By wood are not meant the buckets, which in ancient times were of earthenware, but the wooden pole through whose movement the water is lifted from the well. The image also points to the plant kingdom, which draws up water from the earth through its vessels. Furthermore, the well from which water is drawn contains the idea of an inexhaustible dispenser of nourishment.

The Judgment

The Well. One may change the city, but one cannot change the well. It neither decreases nor increases. They come and go and draw from the well. If one has almost reached the water of the well, but the rope has not yet reached the bottom, or one breaks his jar, this brings misfortune. In ancient China, capitals were sometimes moved, partly for reasons of favorable location, partly at the change of dynasties. The architectural style changed over the centuries, but the form of the well has remained the same from primordial times down to the present day. Thus the well is an image of the social organization of humanity in its most primitive necessities of life, independent of all political configurations. Political configurations and nations change, but the life of human beings with its requirements remains eternally the same. That cannot be changed. This life is also inexhaustible. It neither diminishes nor increases, and it is there for all. Generations come and go, and they all enjoy life in its inexhaustible abundance. For a sound political or social organization of humanity, however, two things are necessary. One must go down to the very foundations of life. Any superficiality in the order of life that leaves the deepest human needs unsatisfied is just as defective as if no attempt at order had been made at all. In the same way, carelessness through which the jar is broken brings evil. If, for example, the military protection of a state is so exaggerated as to provoke wars through which the state's power is destroyed, that is a breaking of the jar. The sign also has reference to the individual person. However different the talents and educations of human beings may be, human nature at its foundation is the same in everyone. And each person, in his cultivation, can draw from the inexhaustible fountainhead of the divine nature of the human essence. But here too, two dangers threaten: first, that in one's cultivation one fails to penetrate to the real roots of humanity and remains entangled in convention—such half-culture is as bad as uncultivated ignorance—or that one suddenly collapses and neglects the cultivation of his being.

The Image

Water over wood: the image of the Well. Thus the superior man encourages the people at their work and exhorts them to help one another. Below is the sign Sun, wood; above it is the sign Kan, water. The wood draws the water upward. Just as wood as an organism imitates the activity of the well, which benefits all parts of the plant, so the superior man orders human society so that, like a plant organism, it interlocks for the well-being of the whole.

The lines