On Errors Passed Down by the Fashion of the Day (Shi Shuo Yi E Chuan E)

Where the Errors Come From

Shen closes his critique of the profession with a diagnosis. Four doors let error in: misreading the weight of words, ignorant men writing books that are then misapprehended, a chance hit taken as law, and old charts recorded wrongly — or, worse, read with an outer structure forced in. He then shows two charts misread in exactly those ways, and ends on the motive: practitioners must reach a noble chart, so they take rumour for evidence or quietly supply the birth hour a man never knew.