# Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly

Canonical page: https://thefreeiching.com/library/4
Last updated: 2026-10-07

```
━━━━━━━
━━━  ━━━
━━━  ━━━
━━━  ━━━
━━━━━━━
━━━  ━━━
```

- **Upper trigram:** [Gen 艮](https://thefreeiching.com/trigrams/gen), Mountain, keeping still
- **Lower trigram:** [Kan 坎](https://thefreeiching.com/trigrams/kan), Water, the abysmal, danger
- **Lines, bottom to top:** 010001 (1 = solid yang, 0 = broken yin)

## Contemporary judgment

Youthful folly: inexperience meeting a situation it does not yet understand. This is not weakness; it is the beginning of wisdom. The teacher does not chase the student. Sincere questioning and genuine humility now are the seeds of true learning.

## Image

A spring at the foot of the mountain. The young water has not yet found its path. The superior person cultivates character through steady practice and attention.

## Counsel

Ask honestly and then listen. Do not demand answers on your own terms: you do not yet know which questions are worth asking. Accept the discipline of a real practice, even when progress feels invisible. Real understanding arrives quietly to those who stay with the work.

## The six lines

*Numbered from the bottom upward. These line texts are read when that line is changing in a cast.*

### Line 1

> A six at the beginning means:
> To develop the fool, it is favorable to put them under discipline.
> One should take off the fetters.
> To continue thus brings humiliation.

### Line 2

> A nine in the second place means:
> To bear with fools in gentleness brings good fortune.
> To know how to take a wife brings good fortune.
> The son is equal to the household.

### Line 3

> A six in the third place means:
> You should not take a maiden
> who, seeing a man of bronze,
> cannot keep herself in hand.
> Nothing furthers.

### Line 4

> A six in the fourth place means:
> Confined youthful folly brings humiliation.

### Line 5

> A six in the fifth place means:
> Childlike folly brings good fortune.

### Line 6

> A nine at the top means:
> In punishing folly, it is not favorable to commit transgressions.
> It is favorable only to ward off transgressions.

## Related hexagrams

- **Nuclear (lines 2 to 5):** [24 Return](https://thefreeiching.com/library/24)
- **Inverse (turned upside down):** [3 Difficulty at the Beginning](https://thefreeiching.com/library/3)
- **Opposite (every line flipped):** [49 Revolution](https://thefreeiching.com/library/49)

## If one line changes

| Changing line | Relating hexagram |
| --- | --- |
| Line 1 | [41 Decrease](https://thefreeiching.com/library/41) |
| Line 2 | [23 Splitting Apart](https://thefreeiching.com/library/23) |
| Line 3 | [18 Work on the Decayed](https://thefreeiching.com/library/18) |
| Line 4 | [64 Before Completion](https://thefreeiching.com/library/64) |
| Line 5 | [59 Dispersion](https://thefreeiching.com/library/59) |
| Line 6 | [7 The Army](https://thefreeiching.com/library/7) |

Previous: [3 Difficulty at the Beginning](https://thefreeiching.com/library/3). Next: [5 Waiting](https://thefreeiching.com/library/5). [All sixty-four hexagrams](https://thefreeiching.com/library).

*The judgment, image and counsel are original contemporary paraphrases written for The Free I Ching. The line text is the CC0 translation from [jesshewitt/i-ching](https://github.com/jesshewitt/i-ching), derived from Richard Wilhelm's 1924 German edition.*

## Cite this page

The Free I Ching. "Hexagram 4: Youthful Folly." https://thefreeiching.com/library/4 (updated 2026-10-07).

*The I Ching is a tool for reflection, not a prediction. Nothing here forecasts events or replaces professional advice. Short quotations with a link back are welcome. Please do not republish a page in full. The open data files at [/data](https://thefreeiching.com/data) are licensed CC BY 4.0.*

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Source: The Free I Ching (https://thefreeiching.com/library/4). The I Ching is a tool for reflection, not a prediction. Nothing here forecasts events or replaces professional advice.