 A corollary of Jinsai’s outspoken subordination of principle within generative force was his denial of the relatively orthodox Neo-Confucian claim that human nature is united in morally good ri. Rather than a universalistic affirmation of the goodness of human nature, Jinsai emphasizes the diversity of human nature as a person’s inborn disposition, ranging from good to bad. Needless to say, Jinsai saw the Cheng-Zhu claim that human nature is principle, or ri, as profoundly mistaken. After all, in Jinsai’s view, ri, which as a written word depicts the veins in a piece of jade, was a “dead word,” i.e., one that refers to an inanimate order not typically associated with the vitality of the human world. In contrast to ri, Jinsai extolled michi, or the way, as a “living word,” i.e., one which symbolized the dynamism of human activity.