Since I am not a sinologue. a foreword to the book ofChanges from my hand must be a testimonial of myindividual experience with this great and singular book. Italso affords me a welcome opportunity to pay tribute againto the memory of my late friend, Richard Wilhelm. Hehimself was profoundly aware of the cultural significance ofhis translation of the I Ching, a version unrivaled in theWestIf the meaning of the Book of Changes were easygrasp, the work would need no foreword. But this is farfrom being the case. for there is so much that is obscureabout it that Western scholars have tended to dispose of it aa collection of"magic spells", either too abstruse to beintelligible, or of no value whatsoever. Legge's translationof the I Ching, up to now the only version available inEnglish, has done little to make the work accessible toWestern minds. Wilhelm, however, has made every effortto open the way to an understanding of the symbolism of thetext. He was in a position to do this because he himself washt the philosophy and the use of the I Ching by thevenerable sage Lao Naihstan; moreover, he had over aperiod of many years put the peculiar technique of the oracleinto practice. His grasp of the living meaning of the textgives his version of the I Ching a depth of perspective thatan exclusively academic knowledge of Chinese philosophycould never provide
am greatly indebted to Wilhelm for the light he hasthrown upon the complicated problem of the I Ching, andfor insight as regards its practical application as well. Formore than thirty years I have interested myself in this oracletechnique, or method of exploring the unconscious, for ithas seemed to me of uncommon significance. I was alreadfairly familiar with the I Ching when I first met Wilhelm inthe early nineteen twenties: he confirmed for me then what Ialready knew, and taught me many things morei do not know Chinese and have never been in China. Ican assure my reader that it is not altogether easy to find theright access to this monument of Chinese thought, whichdeparts so completely from our ways of thinking. In order tounderstand what such a book is all about, it is imperative tocast off certain prejudices of the Western mind. it is acurious fact that such a gifted and intelligent people as theChinese has never developed what we call science. Ourscience, however, is based upon the principle of causality,and causality is considered to be an axiomatic truth. but agreat change in our standpoint is setting in. What Kant'Critique of Pure Reason failed to do, is being accomplishedby modem physics. The axioms of causality are beingshaken to their foundations: we know now that what weterm natural laws are merely statistical truths and thus mustnecessarily allow for exceptions. We have not sufficientlytaken into account as yet that we need the laboratory with itsincisive restrictions in order to demonstrate the invariablevalidity of natural law. If we leave things to nature, we see avery different picture: every process is partially or totallyinterfered with by chance, so much so that under naturacircumstances a course of events absolutely conforming tospecific laws is almost an exception
The Chinese mind, as I see it at work in the I Ching,seems to be exclusively preoccupied with the chance aspectof events. What we call coincidence seems to be the chiefconcern of this peculiar mind, and what we worship ascausality passes almost unnoticed. We must admit that thereis something to be said for the immense importance ofchance. An incalculable amount of human effort is directedto combating and restricting the nuisance or dangerrepresented by chance. Theoretical considerations of causeand effect often look pale and dusty in comparison to thepractical results of chance. It is all very well to say that thecrystal of quartz is a hexagonal prism. The statement is quitetrue in so far as an ideal crystal is envisaged. But in natureone finds no two crystals exactly alike, although all areunmistakably hexagonal. The actual form, however, seemsto appeal more to the Chinese sage than the ideal one. Thejumble of natural laws constituting empirical reality holdmore significance for him than a causal explanation ofevents that, moreover, must usually be separated from oneanother in order to be properly dealt with
The manner in which the I Ching tends to look uponreality seems to disfavor our causalistic procedures. Themoment under actual observation appears to the ancientChinese view more of a chance hit than a clearly definedresult of concurring causal chain processes. The matter ofinterest seems to be the configuration formed by chanceevents in the moment of observation and not at all thehypothetical reasons that seemingly account for thecoincidence. While the Western mind carefully siftsweighs, selects, classifies, isolates, the Chinese picture ofthe moment encompasses everything down to the minutestnonsensical detail, because all of the ingredients make upthe observed momentThus it happens that when one throws the three coins, orcounts through the forty-nine yarrow stalks, these chancedetails enter into the picture of the moment of observationand form a part of it- a part that is insignificant to us, yetmost meaningful to the Chinese mind. With us it would be abanal and almost meaningless statement (at least on the faceof it)to say that whatever happens in a given momentpossesses inevitably the quality peculiar to that moment