 An early expression of the Neo-Confucian belief in the ultimate value of language and meaning was made by Hayashi Razan in the preface to his colloquial rendition of Chen Beixi’s (1159–1223) The Meanings of Neo-Confucian Terms (Xingli ziyi). Incidentally, the latter text can easily be interpreted as a sustained reaffirmation of the correct meanings of terms in the wake of an age of semantic skepticism, and as a defense of Confucian realism over rampant Buddhist nominalism. That Razan devoted much of his final years to authoring a lengthy colloquial explication of Beixi’s Ziyi speaks volumes about his view of the importance of language. In his preface, Razan explained the crucial nature of language by reasoning that “the minds of the sages and worthies are manifest in their words, and their words are found in their writings. Unless we understand the meanings of their words, how can we comprehend the minds of the sages and worthies?” Elsewhere Razan emphasized that people could never realize the minds of the sages and worthies in themselves unless they first understood the remarks of the sages and worthies as recorded in the words of texts communicating them.