The Fox

The fox is the Book of Changes' image of wariness in transition: the animal that crosses the ice listening for cracks. It presides over the final hexagram of the book, 64 Wei Chi - Before Completion, whose Judgment reads:

BEFORE COMPLETION. Success.
But if the little fox, after nearly completing the crossing,
Gets his tail in the water,
There is nothing that would further.

Wilhelm's commentary unfolds the double portrait: "one must move warily, like an old fox walking over ice. The caution of a fox walking over ice is proverbial in China. His ears are constantly alert to the cracking of the ice, as he carefully and circumspectly searches out the safest spots. A young fox who as yet has not acquired this caution goes ahead boldly, and it may happen that he falls in and gets his tail wet when he is almost across the water." The danger is greatest just before the end, when confidence outruns attention.

The paired endings of the book frame the whole problem of finishing without ruin in fox anatomy. In 63 Chi Chi - After Completion the first line reads "He breaks his wheels. He gets his tail in the water. No blame," the man of strong character who checks his course in time and is "hit only from behind like a fox that, having crossed the water, at the last minute gets its tail wet." At the top of the same hexagram the image darkens to "He gets his head in the water. Danger," the peril of turning back to admire a crossing already made, and 64 Wei Chi - Before Completion closes on the same warning: "But if one wets his head, He loses it, in truth."

The fox has one other face. In 40 Hsieh - Deliverance cunning turns political: "One kills three foxes in the field And receives a yellow arrow," the designing flatterers who must be hunted from public life before deliverance is real. The fox's caution before the crossing, meanwhile, is the very portrait Tao Te Ching 15 gives of the ancient masters, cautious, like men crossing a winter stream.