Chu Hsi. (1130-1200). Confucian thinker. Born at Anhui, he spent his life mainly as a temple guardian, attaining great importance in Chinese and other oriental thought. His arrangement of the Confucian classics was used in the world-famous Chinese system of civil service examinations from 1313 till the beginning of the 20th c. According to Chu Hsi, a principle lies behind everything, the Great Ultimate. But a principle must be actualized, and this actualization requires, besides the indispensable principle, a material force, so that there is both what in the language of Western thought might be called the universal and the particular. Chu Hsi also emphasized the ancient Confucian concept of jen, interpreting it in a novel way. In dealing with the problem of the One and the Many (historically a basic problem in both Eastern and Western thought), he used both the yin-yang principle and that of the Great Ultimate. The principle remains constant and is absolute; its manifestations are incalculable and relative. Since mind is directly related to the Great Ultimate, whole and physical objects are more indirectly related to it, mind is superior to the rest of nature. This view entails a very serious attention to the role of the human mind in achieving both its own clarity and the individual's proper ethical relation to other individuals.

Geddes MacGregor, Dictionary of Religion and Philosophy, New York: Paragon House, 1989