Hexagram 60: Limitation
Jie · 節
The Judgment
Success. Galling limitation must not be persevered in. Limitations are troublesome, but they are effective. Living economically in normal times prepares for times of want. Being sparing saves from humiliation. Limitations are also indispensable in the regulation of world conditions—in nature there are fixed limits for summer and winter, day and night, and these limits give the year its meaning. But in limitation, observe due measure. Galling limitations imposed on one's own nature would be injurious. If you go too far in imposing limitations on others, they will rebel. Set limits even upon limitation.
The Image
Water over lake. Create number and measure, examine the nature of virtue and correct conduct. A lake can contain only a definite amount of the infinite quantity of water—this is its peculiarity. In human life, the individual achieves significance through discrimination and setting of limits. Unlimited possibilities are not suited to us; if they existed, life would only dissolve in the boundless. To become strong, life needs the limitations ordained by duty and voluntarily accepted.
「澤上有水，節。」湖能容納的水是有限的，這是它的特性。人生也是這樣——無限的可能性其實不適合我們，有了界限，生命才有形狀。君子用這個道理來「制數度，議德行」——建立標準，思考什麼是對的行為。自願接受的限制，反而讓人更自由。
The Six Lines
Not going out of the door and the courtyard is without blame. When confronted by insurmountable limitations, know where to stop. If you rightly understand this and do not go beyond the limits set for you, you accumulate energy that enables you, when the proper time comes, to act with great force. Discretion is of prime importance in preparing the way for momentous things.
Not going out of the gate and the courtyard brings misfortune. When the time for action has come, the moment must be quickly seized. Just as water first collects in a lake without flowing out, yet is certain to find an outlet when the lake is full, so it is in the life of a person. It is good to hesitate so long as the time for action has not come—but no longer. Once obstacles to action have been removed, anxious hesitation is a mistake bound to bring disaster because you miss your opportunity.
He who knows no limitation will have cause to lament. No blame. If bent only on pleasures and enjoyment, it is easy to lose your sense of necessary limits. If you give yourself over to extravagance, you will suffer the consequences with accompanying regret. Do not seek to lay the blame on others. Only when you realize that mistakes are of your own making will disagreeable experiences free you of errors.
Contented limitation. Success. Every limitation has its value, but a limitation that requires persistent effort entails a cost of too much energy. When limitation is natural—like water flowing only downhill—it necessarily leads to success, for it means saving energy. The energy that otherwise would be consumed in a vain struggle is applied wholly to the matter in hand.
Sweet limitation brings good fortune. Going brings esteem. If we seek to impose restrictions on others only while evading them ourselves, these restrictions will always be resented and provoke resistance. But if a person in a leading position applies limitation first to themselves, demanding little from those associated with them, and with modest means manages to achieve something, good fortune is the result. Such an example meets with emulation.
Galling limitation. Persistence brings misfortune. Remorse disappears. If one is too severe in setting up restrictions, people will not endure them. The more consistent such severity, the worse it is—a reaction is unavoidable. On the other hand, although ruthless severity is not to be applied persistently, there may be times when it is the only means of safeguarding against guilt and remorse. In such situations, ruthlessness toward oneself is the only means of saving one's soul.
Artwork & Treatise
Newton
William Blake, 1795
Isaac Newton hunches naked on a rock at the ocean floor, measuring geometric diagrams with a compass. William Blake created this color print in 1795, depicting the scientist as prisoner of his own rationality. Newton's entire world contracts to the scroll before him—triangles, circles, precise mathematical relationships. The submarine setting suggests depths of materialist thought, reason descended so far into quantification that it loses sight of the spiritual cosmos above. His muscular body curls inward, self-imposed limitation blocking larger truths.
Blake illustrates what Zhou diviners called Jie (節), Limitation—Water above Lake, the trigram Kan over Dui. Water contained within defined banks, lake shores establishing natural boundaries. The character 節 depicts bamboo joints, regular divisions that provide structure through measured intervals. Newton's obsessive measuring represents limitation turned destructive—boundaries so rigid they blind rather than preserve. Yet the hexagram teaches that some limitations make things possible. A vessel contains water by limiting its spread, musical scales organize sound through regulated intervals, bamboo's segmented structure creates strength. Ancient practitioners saw this configuration when questions concerned resource management, necessary restraint, the acceptance of sustainable boundaries.
{artwork_reasoning}
The Judgment addresses Newton's self-imposed constraints: "Limitation. Success. Galling limitation must not be persevered in." Blake critiques excessive restriction—Newton's self-limitation has become galling, cutting him off from imaginative and spiritual understanding. Zhou Dynasty texts describe limitation as necessary but requiring limitation itself. Banks that make a river useful can also choke its flow. In divination, Jie appeared when circumstances required clear boundaries, when waste demanded prevention through measured response.
The Image Text offers guidance Blake might endorse: "Water over lake: the image of Limitation. Thus the superior one creates number and measure, and examines the nature of virtue and correct conduct." The hexagram distinguishes between limitation that preserves and restriction that imprisons. In the I-Ching sequence, Jie follows Dispersion—after scattering comes the need to re-establish structure, but Blake warns that structure serving only itself becomes a prison deeper than any ocean.
Yilin Verse
海為水王，聰聖且明。百流歸德，无有叛逆，常饒優足。
Jiao Yanshou's Forest of Changes (焦氏易林) — Unchanging verse for 節 (Jie)
Character-by-Character Breakdown
Classical Chinese text with pinyin and English meanings