Wake Forest University

Traditional:

62
　　天有春夏秋冬，地有金木水火，人有仁義禮智，皆以 四者相為用也。季札。
Translation:
Heaven has spring, summer, autumn, and winter. The earth has metal, wood, water, and fire. Human beings have benevolence, sense of right and wrong, sense of ritual, and wisdom. In each case, each component is a function (of the previous component or grows out of the previous component).
Ji Zha
Commentary:
Zhu Xi asserts here that the same fundamental spurs for action manifest themselves in the celestial realm, in the earthly realm, and in the human realm. Spring fosters life, metal is the name of the planet Venus, and benevolence is another kind of life-fostering spur or drive. Summer brings life to completion, wood is the name of the planet Jupiter, and the sense of right and wrong is needed to make an individual a fully functioning member of a community. Autumn sees the full ripening of crops and the cessation of their growth, water is the name of the planet Mercury, and the sense of ritual has a curbing influence on human impulses that might otherwise cause one to go too far and trespass upon the rights and territories of others. Winter sees most plants and some animals going into dormancy, fire is the name of the planet Mars, and wisdom is the capacity to understand and judge the acts of other human beings in an objective way and come to a settled judgment.
The connections between the seasons and the human motivations seem natural and appropriate. The names of metal, wood, water, and fire do not seem to have any obvious rationale behind them. Zhu Xi has used four out of five of the Five Phases and he has cited them in the order given in the earliest texts. The names of the Five Phases are also the names of the five planets visible to the naked eye, and it is likely that the names of the planets came first. So the question would be why Zhu Xi chose to cite the order that is derived by application of a special rule to the natural order of the planets. Why correlate spring to Venus, summer to Jupiter, autumn to Mercury, winter to Mars, and omit mention of Saturn?
It would seem more natural to say that if spring produces summer, summer produces autumn, and so forth, then Zhu Xi should have used the Order of production for the Five Phases according to which water produces wood, wood produces fire, and metal produces water. But that order leaves out the needed link, Saturn or soil: fire produces earth, and earth produces metal. One way out of this lack of symmetry between the number of seasons and the number of planets is to arbitrarily designate a fifth season and link it to the soil (earth) and the planet Saturn, and assert that this link occupies a central position. If one constructs a square and labels each corner with the name of a planet, then the fifth planet, Saturn, labels the center of the square. That is probably the reason that Zhu Xi choses Saturn as the planet to omit. It holds an atypical position and serves an atypical function in the speculation and diagrams concerning the five planets, five elements or phases,etc.