 Are the ten theses merely a loose collection, or are they intended to support a particular conclusion? Clearly, several of them can be taken to follow from thesis 5, about the relativity of sameness and difference. Thesis 5 can thus be treated as a premise or guiding principle and might be the main theme. Another possibility is that the ten are intended to culminate in the final thesis, the only one with moral import, which is not relativistic. It states that heaven and earth—all of the natural world—form a monistic unit, and so our moral caring should extend to all things. The question of the overall significance of the set in effect boils down to the question of whether, given the overall context, thesis 10 has a privileged status over thesis 5 and the others. From Hu Shih (1922) on, many interpreters have suggested it  does.[14]  Clearly, the textual evidence is so sparse that there is no question of deciding the issue conclusively. However, there are at least three good reasons for favoring the monistic interpretation. First, the placement of thesis 10 at the end makes it natural to read it as the conclusion or main theme. Second, not only is thesis 10 placed last, it is the only thesis with ethical significance. A plausible explanation is that whoever arranged the ten theses saw the ethical view as emerging out of the others. Third, and most important, unlike theses 1 and 5, thesis 10 seems to make an absolutist claim. If it were parallel to theses 1 and 5, we might expect it to present a perspectival claim, such as that heaven and earth are in one respect one body and in another respect many. But instead it simply asserts that they are one.