 For Zhu, investigating things to attain knowledge involves arriving at a grasp of their constituent li; “knowing” or “understanding” such phenomena, thus, is a matter of grasping their li. While Zhu often speaks of knowing or comprehending something in terms of the metaphor of seeing it clearly, of having a clear discernment of it, which is nothing like rigid propositional knowledge, he does recognize several forms or levels of knowing, and regards the basic steps of learning in analytical propositional terms and the higher levels in more synthetic insight terms. That is, one first learns facts about the building blocks of the world and human life, e.g., what things are, what they mean, how they fit together; then, gradually, one gains insights into the broader patterns of relationship and intercourse that comprise the world and human life and that eventually afford sensitive glimpses of the inner root as well as the larger picture. Zhu’s discourses are as full of detailed accounts of phenomena as they are of synthetic insights, which should be expected given that Zhu gives equal status and value to the various sorts of qualities that the Western tradition divides into primary (quantitative), secondary (qualitative), and tertiary (qualitative effects).