 Principle and conditions should always “be discussed syncretically as a whole” (Wang QSYS: 48:9.5a-b). This relational integrity presumed that the primacy of principle was predicated on the immediacy of differentiation: “Conditions become different when times are different; principle also becomes different when conditions are different” (Wang QSYS: 58:15.3b). Li-qi as a totality represented the universe as complex phenomena of perpetually appearing contingencies, subject to the workings of human agency: “When one accords with the times, one complies with that which the time makes inevitable in order to save oneself, and so escape from disaster” (quoted in McMorran 1975: 457).