Chu Hsi’s Monistic Philosophy

The writings of Chu Hsi, especially his treatise on The Immaterial Principle [li] and Primary Matter [ch’i], leave no doubt as to the monism of his philosophy.  In this work occurs the passage:  “In the universe there exists no primary matter devoid of the immaterial principle; and no immaterial principle apart from primary matter”; and although the two are never separated “the immaterial principle [as Chou Tzu explains] is what is previous to form, while primary matter is what is subsequent to form,” the idea being that the two are different manifestations of the same mysterious force from which all things proceed.

It is unnecessary to follow this philosophy along all the different branches which grew out of it, for we are here concerned only with the seed.  We have observed how Chinese dualism became a monism, and how while the monism was established the dualism was retained.  It is this mono-dualistic theory, combining the older and newer philosophy, which in China, then as now, constitutes the accepted explanation of the origin of things, of the universe itself and all that it contains.

Lao Tzu’s “Tao”

There are other cosmogonies in Chinese philosophy, but they need not detain us long.  Lao Tzu (sixth century B.C.), in his Tao-te ching, The Canon of Reason and Virtue (at first entitled simply Lao Tzu), gave to the then existing scattered sporadic conceptions of the universe a literary form.  His tao, or ‘Way,’ is the originator of Heaven and earth, it is “the mother of all things.”  His Way, which was “before God,” is but a metaphorical expression for the manner in which things came at first into being out of the primal nothingness, and how the phenomena of nature continue to go on, “in stillness and quietness, without striving or crying.”  Lao Tzu is thus so far monistic, but he is also mystical, transcendental, even pantheistic.  The way that can be walked is not the Eternal Way; the name that can be named is not the Eternal Name.  The Unnameable is the originator of Heaven and earth; manifesting itself as the Nameable, it is “the mother of all things.”  “In Eternal Non-Being I see the Spirituality of Things; in Eternal Being their limitation.  Though different under these two aspects, they are the same in origin; it is when development takes place that different names have to be used.  It is while they are in the condition of sameness that the mystery concerning them exists.  This mystery is indeed the mystery of mysteries.  It is the door of all spirituality.”

This tao, indefinable and in its essence unknowable, is “the fountain-head of all beings, and the norm of all actions.  But it is not only the formative principle of the universe; it also seems to be primordial matter:  chaotic in its composition, born prior to Heaven and earth, noiseless, formless, standing alone in its solitude, and not changing, universal in its activity, and unrelaxing, without being exhausted, it is capable of becoming the mother of the universe.”  And there we may leave it.  There is no scheme of creation, properly so called.  The Unwalkable Way leads us to nothing further in the way of a cosmogony.