It can be inferred that all forms of existence have patterns, animals and plants alike. Brilliant scales or plumes give splendor to a dragon or a phoenix; magnificent stripes and colors give grandeur to tigers and leopards. The colors of a rainbow surpass art; the blossoms of plants are beyond craftsmanship. Not extraneous embellishments, but Nature makes it so. Similarly, the sounds produced on the apertures in forest trees resemble music from pipes and lutes; spring water falling on rocks sounds like melodies from jade chimes and bronze bells. Thus with the making of forms, patterns appear; with the making of sounds, writings emerge. If insentient beings possess such brilliance, how can the feeling and thinking human being lack splendors of art?

Civilization, the harmony of living, began with the beginning of the world. This mystery was first expounded by the discourse on the hexagrams in the Yijing. The hexagrams were invented and drawn by Fuxi, they were finally supplied with an interpretation called the Ten Wings by Confucius, who also wrote discursive essays called Wenyan for the Qian and Kun hexagrams. How well this demonstrates that it is in the nature of the universe for all language (yan) in the world to be refined and structured (wen). As for the first appearance of the eight hexagrams in the Picture of the River presented by the dragon in the Huanghe, the Nine Policies of Government delivered by the tortoise of River Luo, events encapsulated in the florid accounts of Crimson letters on green tablets and alluded to in plainer tales of golden inscription on jade plaques, why, we do not know by whom they were masterminded. Perhaps they were no more than an expression of some supra-human principle. When signs modelled upon the footprints of birds and beasts came to replace knots, written language began to shine. The feats of Shennong and Fuxi were chronicled in the "three greatnesses", although they came to be buried in the abysm of time and can no longer be recalled.