 One may argue that Wang Bi’s reading of hexagrams limits the Yijing to concrete human affairs. Unlike the Han commentators, Wang Bi had little interest in cosmology and rejected any attempt to match the cosmic realm with the human realm. But in seeing hexagrams as pointers revealing the co-dependence of part and whole, substance and function, Wang Bi reminds us that the Yijing is meant to be read metaphorically. In focusing on hexagrams as pointers—pointing toward something hidden, implicit and yet fundamental—he avoids the mistake of the Han commentators who turn the Yijing into a copious system of signs to document the multifarious changes in the universe. To him, the Han scholars’ attempt is futile because they do not accept the basic tenet of the Yijing—the limits of human knowledge (“Ming Xiang”, Lynn 1994: 31–32).