ABSTRACT
Indeed, I should not have been able to discover anything de lirious, idiotic, or schizophrenic in the four answers. In view of the I Ching’s extreme age and its Chinese origin, I cannot con sider its archaic, symbolic, and flowery language abnormal. On the contrary, I should have had to congratulate this hypothetical person on the extent of his insight into my unexpressed state of doubt. On the other hand, any person of clever and versatile mind can turn the whole thing around and show how I have projected my subjective contents into the symbolism of the hexagrams. Such a critique, though catastrophic from the stand point of Western rationality, does no harm to the function of the I Ching. On the contrary, the Chinese sage would smilingly tell me: “Don’t you see how useful the I Ching is in making you project your hitherto unrealized thoughts into its abstruse sym bolism? You could have written your foreword without ever realizing what an avalanche of misunderstanding might be re leased by it.”
