The sages were able to perceive the deepest mysteries of the world.
HSK 7-9
探赜索隐，钩深致远。
Tànzé-suǒyǐn, gōushēn-zhìyuǎn.
Explore the abstruse and seek out the hidden.
Tips
history
Best-known from 《易经·系辞》: 圣人有以见天下之赜 - 'the sages have seen the deepest mysteries of the world'. The four-character 探赜索隐 ('probe the abstruse, search out the hidden') is one of the great Chinese scholarly mottos - used today in titles of academic projects.
register
Pure literary register. Never used in conversation; appears only in classical quotations, scholarly titles, and the rare modern essay reaching for gravitas. Modern speech equivalents: 深奥 (profound), 玄妙 (mysterious).
Components
ideograph
赜zé
abstruse; profound
Compound graph: left side carries 臣 (a downward-looking eye, here a 'submerged / hidden' element) below 匚 (an enclosure); right side has 责 (a phonetic giving the reading). The whole graph evokes 'something deep, enclosed, and to be sought out'. Indexed under Kangxi #154 贝 by tradition; the radical isn't transparently semantic in the modern simplified form.
Filed under radical 臣 (chén, #131) by convention. 臣 is not a separate component in 赜, so no strokes are highlighted.
