 Vitalism as an expression of Qing philosophy focused on evidence provided by the self, the body, and external things. Opposed to the mysticism of an eternal and transcendent creative power such as principle (li), heaven (tian) or the Way (dao) that represented the essence of being, vitalism was in favor of a view of life grasped from within the actualities of the individual self and the external world. It stressed the immediate and ultimate completion of a concrete and dynamic life expressed in terms of qi (material force/psycho-physical force) and qi (concrete implements). It may be conceived as a dynamic monism: dynamic in the sense that it rejected an immutable dao in favor of a relativized way of contingent and finite truths; and monistic in that it dissolved the li-qi dichotomy, subsuming li, which had been considered to be the prior metaphysical and spiritual realm, under qi, the perceptual and experiential realm that had been regarded as secondary. Life within the vitalist framework was dependent on circumstances, particularized, and individualized by the external signs of the self’s contingency and finitude, including the senses, feelings, desires, and emotions. Scholars of late imperial Chinese thought, such as Theodore be Bary, Irene Bloom, and Yamanoi Yū , have pointed to the growing preponderance of this qi-based vitalist philosophy since the late Ming period, which offered a new sense of coherence in the thinking about individuals and the world. But it would be misleading to characterize Qing philosophy as entirely grounded in some sort of formalized qi-oriented metaphysics, to the extent that philosophical lucubration in terms of the Confucian categories of li and qi had ceased to hold the imagination of the thinkers. While qi, representing the material and experiential domain of life, did become ascendant in intellectual discourse, the Qing posture was distinctly averse to metaphysical pondering. Vitalism, with qi as its predicate, was a pervasive attitude that attached foremost importance to concrete realities and actions, inverting the Neo-Confucian metaphysical tendency to reduce humanity and things to an attribute, manifestation, and appearance of li and dao. Qi now reigned supreme.