 For Zhu Xi, the world presents a vital tapestry of relationships, cycles, processes, events, and things that are spontaneously arrayed in aesthetic order. In the nexus of these arrays, li are manifested three dimensionally and present different faces from different angles (Graham 1986a: 148; Qian Mu 1986: 133). Li are inherently perspectival. Zhu adopts metaphors of the grains in wood, the lines in jade, the “veins” in a leaf, the lines in marble, and even the sinewy texture of beef, to stress that li are manifested immanently rather than abstractly, and thus are to be sought concretely by observing phenomena in the world, not by pure, disengaged, abstract ratiocination (Needham 1956a: 473). Moreover, li are never presented in their putative optimal pure form. They always appear conditioned by the degree of purity of the qi through which they are manifested and of the environing conditions (Wade 2003).