GB:
或问先有理后有气之说。曰：不消如此说，而今知得他合下是先有 理后有气邪，后有理先有气邪？皆不可得而推究，然 以意度之，则 气是依傍这理行，及此气之聚则理亦在焉。盖气则能凝结造作，理 却无情意，无计度，无造作，只此气凝聚处，理便在其中。且如天 地间人物草木禽兽，其生也莫不有种，定不会无种子白地生出一个 物事。这个都是气。若理则只是个泾洁空阔底世界，无形迹，他却 不会造作。气则能酝酿凝聚生物也。但有此气则理便在其中。
big5:
┪拜Τ瞶Τぇ弧りぃ弧τさ眔 琌Τ 瞶ΤǜΤ瞶Τǜぃ眔τ崩╯礛 種ぇ玥 琌ㄌ衬硂瞶︽のぇ籈玥瞶ョ瞛籠玥井挡硑瞶 玱礚薄種礚璸礚硑井籈矪瞶獽ㄤいぱ 丁れ竀脋ㄤネ馋ぃΤ贺﹚ぃ穦礚贺フネ ㄆ硂常琌璝瞶玥琌稀溜┏礚格玱 ぃ穦硑玥吝艭井籈ネΤ玥瞶獽ㄤい
Someone asked [about] the theory that first there is li and afterwards there comes lifebreath. [Zhu Xi] said: One need not put it that way. Is it possible today to know whether in that earliest of times there was first li and then lifebreath? Or did li come afterwards and lifebreath come first? There is either case no way to get to the bottom of the matter. However, if one attempts to use rational thought to make a [provisional] determination, then [one would conclude that lifebreath relies on this li to move forward [in its process of consolidation], and when [a particular unit of] lifebreath is consolidated, then [a mapping of this] li is consequently found within it. That is to say, lifebreath is that which can consolidate and create something, and li is something without any will or intent, without any ability to plan, without the ability to bring anything into existence. It is just that when lifebreath congeals [in some definite configuration] li is found within [as one of its aspects]. It is just in this way that in the entire world in the case of all humans, creatures, vegetation, and beasts, there are none that are produced without there [first] being a seed for that thing. There is certainly no possibility of some entity being produced on a featureless plane from no seed whatsoever. All of this is lifebreath. In the case of li there is only a sterile and empty world that does not contain a single trace. It, contrary to what is true of lifebreath, cannot bring something into being. Lifebreath can ferment, coagulate, and bring forth a creature. But there being this lifebreath (i.e., the aforesaid creature) there is li to be found within it.
Commentary:
The question, "Which came first, the chicken or the egg?" is so hackneyed that I suppose most people in the contemporary world think of it as a harmless question with which to confound little children. But it now appears that life is somehow prefigured in the very nature of dead matter. At least we now know that building block of life, such as amino acids, assemble themselves in the vastness of interstellar space under the random impulse of the energies in which all of the universe is bathed, and we assume that we will find the processes that brought life to earth repeated elsewhere in the universe.
Zhu Xi dances around this question. He is extremely careful to qualify what he says as to the possibility of saying anything uncontrovertible about the earliest link in the causal chains that lead down to the living creatures of the world of his time. He argues that what we can see in the world of today gives us nothing more than indications of how things may have been in the beginning.
Zhu Xi uses the example of seeds and vegetation to explore the intricacies of this conundrum. If one plants an acorn one gets an oak tree and not a mustard tree. The weight and volume of the mature oak tree could not have come from the seed. It has to have been accreted to the tree from the outside, somehow.
There are two ways of conceptualizing the assemby of an oak tree, and it appears to me that Zhu Xi may have had both of them in mind. One can imagine an invisible substrate along which the stones or bricks of organic life line themselves up, or one can imagine that the components of life are like jigsaw puzzle pieces that will eventually fall into the right combinations and lock together if given enough jostling and enough time. If one looks at an acorn, does one see in it the formal aspect of a full-grown tree, that is, does one see the li of an oak tree in an acorn? Zhu says the acorn is lifebreath, and that the li that is associated with the acorn is invisible. But the invisible li associated with an acorn is somehow different from the invisible li associated with a mustard plant.
If we look at this problem from the standpoint of a contemporary Western analysis, what do we see? The formal aspect of the oak tree lies in its genetic code, which was present in the single fertilized ovum around which the acorn formed, and the material aspect of the oak tree was assembled out of components absorbed from the environment. As far as the original cell goes, it is clear that the "form vs. matter" dilemna can only be understood by saying that the two are aspects of each other. One cannot have a genetic identity without having material entities that are specific configurations of chemical building blocks. If we try to push beyond that to say that "dead matter" somehow came to life at some point (or perhaps many points) in the history of the universe, and did so by some chance assemblage of ordinary matter that then took on the quality of life, we do not escape the form vs. matter problem. Matter will not assemble itself into any random chemical combination that we might wish. Instead, the kinds of chemical combinations that can be formed are prefigured in the very nature of the basic building blocks of our universe. When we ask "Why?" we find we are at the frontiers of science, hoping to find a "grand unified theory" that might give us some explanation, but (I suspect) still not telling us anything clearer than that characteristics have to be characteristics of something, and every thing has to have characteristics. Whether there will be some explanation for why all the hydrogen atoms in the universe seem to be made on the same plan remains to be seen.
So, going back to Zhu Xi, how does he understand this conundrum? He appears to me to be saying that, as far as the actual things of this universe go, there is no way to assign temporal priority to either li or lifebreath. If we abstract from the material aspect of a thing we might be aware of an invisible scaffold of some sort, but it would be only one in our imaginations. We could perhaps imagine putting other material constituents into the positions defined by the scaffolding, but in reality we could not make a snow flake out of anything but water.
In our current understanding of the universe, as we push back in time toward the beginning we see the total volume of the universe decreasing, apparently heading toward a zero volume. The moment when our universe erupted from this single point is called the "Big Bang," and time began at this point. So did the most basic components of our universe, and, people believe, the components are of a few types. These types are presumably identical throughout space and time.
Whether Zhu Xi is a metaphysical dualist or a metaphysical monist depends on whether he has an analogue to the Big Bang theory.
-- PEM