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Hexagram 4 of 64

I Ching hexagram 4 ☶☵ Youthful Folly

I Ching hexagram 4, Youthful Folly, is mountain above, water below. In brief: inexperience meeting a problem it does not yet understand. Counting from the bottom, its solid lines sit in places 2 and 6 and its broken lines in 1, 3, 4 and 5.

Lines, bottom up
⚋⚊⚋⚋⚋⚊ 010001 · 1 = solid
Trigrams
Mountain over Water Gen ☶ / Kan ☵
Every line changed
№ 49 Revolution
In Legge, 1882
p. 64 Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16

Legge, The Yî King, 1882.

Paired with it line by line — changed, turned over or read from the inner lines: 49, Revolution, 3, Difficulty at the Beginning and 24, Return.

Also with Mountain above: 18, Work on the Decayed, 22, Grace and 23, Splitting Apart.

Also with Water below: 6, Conflict, 7, The Army and 29, The Abysmal.

To draw a hexagram of your own, cast the I Ching with three coins.

I Ching Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly

Upper trigram

☶

Mountain (Gen) above

Stillness and limit.

FamilyYoungest son
ElementEarth

Lower trigram

☵

Water (Kan) below

Danger and depth.

FamilyMiddle son
ElementWater

What the text says, in plain terms

The Judgement and the Image of hexagram 4

The Judgement

Inexperience that needs a teacher. Learning succeeds when the student comes asking sincerely; asking the same question again and again, hoping for a different answer, gets nowhere.

The Image

A spring flowing out at the foot of a mountain: water that does not yet know its way. The lesson is to act with steady purpose and let character be shaped by practice.

A summary of meaning written for this site, not a translation — James Legge’s 1882 translation of the full text follows below. How the Judgement and the Image are read, and which translations to use →

Primary source

Hexagram 4 in James Legge’s translation

The Judgement
“Măng (indicates that in the case which it presupposes) there will be progress and success. I do not (go and) seek the youthful and inexperienced, but he comes and seeks me. When he shows (the sincerity that marks) the first recourse to divination, I instruct him. If he apply a second and third time, that is troublesome; and I do not instruct the troublesome. There will be advantage in being firm and correct.”
The Image
“(The trigram representing) a mountain, and beneath it that for a spring issuing forth form Măng. The superior man, in accordance with this, strives to be resolute in his conduct and nourishes his virtue.”

The lines

  1. Line 1 · bottom The first line, divided, (has respect to) the dispelling of ignorance. It will be advantageous to use punishment (for that purpose), and to remove the shackles (from the mind). But going on in that way (of punishment) will give occasion for regret.
  2. Line 2 The second line, undivided, (shows its subject) exercising forbearance with the ignorant, in which there will be good fortune; and admitting (even the goodness of women, which will also be fortunate. (He may be described also as) a son able to (sustain the burden of) his family.
  3. Line 3 The third line, divided, (seems to say) that one should not marry a woman whose emblem it might be, for that, when she sees a man of wealth, she will not keep her person from him, and in no wise will advantage come from her.
  4. Line 4 The fourth line, divided, (shows its subject as if) bound in chains of ignorance. There will be occasion for regret.
  5. Line 5 The fifth line, divided, shows its subject as a simple lad without experience. There will be good fortune.
  6. Line 6 · top In the topmost line, undivided, we see one smiting the ignorant (youth). But no advantage will come from doing him an injury. Advantage would come from warding off injury from him.
James Legge, trans., The Yî King, The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), p. 64 — read the original text. Words in parentheses are Legge’s own: in his preface he explains that they supply what the original writer left unsaid. “Undivided” and “divided” are his terms for yang and yin lines, counted from the bottom. The Image comes from the second appendix of the book, the Treatise on the Symbolism.

Youthful Folly for a decision

You may not know enough yet. Look for someone with more experience and take the advice seriously once you have asked. Repeating the question — to an oracle or to people — is a way of avoiding the answer.

I Ching 4 in love and relationships

Naivety or immaturity on one side. Growth comes from honest guidance and from being willing to learn, not from pretending to understand.

Hexagram 4 at work

Training, apprenticeships and first attempts. Mistakes are expected; what matters is accepting correction and practicing consistently.

The six lines of hexagram 4

Read from the bottom up. This figure runs yin yang yin yin yin yang — what each position means.

Hexagram 4: Mountain over Water
Hexagram 4, Youthful Folly, line by line from the bottomlineplace · answer1Line 1 · yin, brokenout of placeno answer from 42Line 2 · yang, solidout of placeanswered by 53Line 3 · yin, brokenout of placeanswered by 64Line 4 · yin, brokenin its placeno answer from 15Line 5 · yin, brokenout of placeanswered by 26Line 6 · yang, solidout of placeanswered by 3LowerKanWaterUpperGenMountainKing Wen sequence · read bottom to topastrohot.com

2 yang and 4 yin lines. One of the six stands in its proper place, and the pairs 2–5 and 3–6 answer.

What the two trigrams do to each other

Inner and outer

Water below — danger and depth — is the private, inner side of hexagram 4.

Mountain above — stillness and limit — is the world that side meets.

The five-element relation

Earth above controls Water below. Circumstance restrains the inner position — pressure comes from the situation, not from within.

Read as a family

The youngest son sits above and the middle son below. Two brothers, the younger one on top — siblings rather than parent and child, with the junior one taking the lead.

Calculated from the lines

Hexagrams connected to hexagram 4

Hexagram 24, Return

Nuclear hexagram

24 · Return

What is happening beneath the surface.

Lines 2–4 give Zhen (Thunder) as the lower trigram, lines 3–5 give Kun (Earth) as the upper.

Hexagram 49, Revolution

Opposite hexagram

49 · Revolution

The situation turned inside out.

Change all six lines and Mountain over Water becomes Lake over Fire.

Hexagram 3, Difficulty at the Beginning

Inverse hexagram

3 · Difficulty at the Beginning

The situation seen from the other side.

Turn the figure upside down and Mountain over Water becomes Water over Thunder.

None of these are assigned by an author — each follows from the arrangement of lines.

The image

Mountain above, Water below.

Mountain over Water: stillness and limit meeting danger and depth.

← 3 · All 64 · 5 →

1 The Creative 2 The Receptive 3 Difficulty at the Beginning 5 Waiting 6 Conflict 7 The Army 8 Holding Together

Sources

  1. James Legge, trans., The Yî King, The Sacred Books of the East, vol. 16 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1882), p. 64

Statements of fact on this page were checked against these sources in October 2026. How we choose and check sources: editorial policy.

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