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The character 理 (lǐ): reason

A jade workshop: a wooden table before a lattice window onto bamboo and a moon gate. On the table a block of pale green jade sawn flat on one face, a bowl of water behind it, a jade disc and a bow drill in front. An orange figure in a long robe leans over the block in profile, one hand resting on the stone. At the right the character 理 in black: two bars and a stem ending in an upward flick, beside a four celled box over two bars.
Pronunciation
lǐ
Strokes
11
Radical
玉
Made of
王里

What it means

texture; grain (of wood); inner essence; intrinsic order; reason; logic; truth; science; natural science (esp. physics); to manage; to pay attention to; to run (affairs); to handle; to put in order; to tidy up

Where its shape comes from

Xu Shen glosses this one not as reason but as a craft: to work jade, from 玉, with 里 for the sound. The lapidary follows the veins of the stone to open it without shattering it, and that is where the word starts: the grain of jade, then the structure of a thing, then order, then reason. Duan Yucai presses the point in 1815, jade is very hard, yet whoever follows its grain shapes it without effort. The character does not say logic. It says: follow the grain.

Source: Xu Shen, Shuowen Jiezi (121 CE) and Duan Yucai's commentary (1815); the Chinese University of Hong Kong character database.

A way to remember it

On the right, the 里 learned earlier, complete. On the left, what has the shape of the 王 of entry twelve, except that its bottom bar rises to the right instead of lying flat: that is 玉, jade, squeezed against the edge, the very jade that the enclosure of 国 shuts in.

This is a memory aid, not the origin of the character.

Words it appears in

Writing it

See the stroke order of 理, animated stroke by stroke.

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