Clarifying the Judgments [Ming tuan]

[This is taken from Wang Bi's "General Remarks on the Changes of Zhou" Lynn, pp. 25 ff]
The first section of the essay is called 'Clarifying the Judgments [Ming tuan].' The Lynn translation follows: {ABF note: remember, this was written around 249 ce}
 
What is a Judgment? It discusses the body or substance of a hexagram as a whole and clarifies what the controlling principle is from which it evolves.
    The many cannot govern the many; that which governs the many is the most solitary [the One]. Activity cannot govern activity; that which controls all activity that occurs in the world, thanks to constancy, is the One. Therefore for all the many to manage to exist, their controlling principle must reach back to the One, and for all activities to manage to function, their source cannot but be the One.
    No thing ever behaves haphazardly but necessarily follows its own principle. To unite things, there is a fundamental regulator; to integrate them, there is a primordial generator. Therefore things are complex but not chaotic, multitudinous but not confused. This is why when the six lines of a hexagram intermingle, one can pick out one of them and use it to clarify what is happening, and as the hard ones and the soft ones supersede one another, one can establish which one is the master and use it to determine how all are ordered. This is why for mixed matters the calculation [zhuan] of the virtues and the determination of the rights and wrongs involved could never be complete without the middle lines. This is why if one examines things from the point of view of totality, even though things are multitudinous, one knows that it is possible to deal with them by holding fast to the One, and if one views them from the point of view of the fundamental, even though the concepts involved are immense in number and scope, one knows that it is possible to cover them all with a single name. Thus when we use an armillary sphere to view the great [heavenly] movements, the actions of Heaven and Earth lose their capacity to amaze us, and if we keep to a single center point when viewing what is about to come to us, then things converging from the six directions lose their capacity to overwhelm us with their number. Therefore when we cite the name of a hexagram, in its meaning is found the controlling principle, and when we read the words of the Judgment, then we have got more than half the ideas involved. Now, although past and present differ and armies and states then and now appear dissimilar, the way these central principles function is such that nothing can ever stray far from them. Although kinds and gradations of things exist in infinite variety, there is a chief controlling principle that inheres in all of them. Of things we esteem in a Judgment, it is this that is the most significant.
    The rare is what the many value; the one that is unique is the one the multitudes make their chief. If one hexagram has five positive lines and one negative, then we have the negative line be the master. If it is a matter of five negative lines and one positive line, then we have the positive line be the master. Now, what the negative seeks after is the positive, and what the positive seeks after is the negative. If the positive is represented by a single line, how could the five negative lines all together ever fail to return to it! And if the negative is represented by a single line, how could the five positive lines all together ever fail to follow it! Thus although a negative line may be humble, its becoming the master of a hexagram is due to the fact that it occupies the smallest number of positions. And then there are some hexagrams for which One may set aside the hexagram lines and take up instead the two constituent trigrams, for here the substance of the hexagrams involved does not evolve from individual lines. Things are complex, but one does not worry about their being chaotic; they change, but one does not worry about their being confused. To tie things together, thus preserving the broad significance involved, and to bring forth the simple nature of things, thus being up to dealing with their multiplicity, there is indeed only the Judgments! To deal with the chaotic and yet manage to avoid confusion and to handle change and yet manage not to drown in it, only it [the Changes], being the most profound and subtle device in the whole world, could ever be up to doing these things! Therefore if we view the Judgments in the light of this, the concepts involved should become clear.