 Although human discretion may allow people of talent and good character to update rules or apply them differently in different contexts, they also allow people who lack talent and good character to misuse them. In these cases, it helps to set limits to abuses of authority and leadership by requiring that leaders adhere to rules. The philosopher who argues for this view most forcefully is Huang Zongxi, who lived in the late Ming and early Qing. In a remarkable essay titled “On Standards (Yuanfa)”, Huang maintains that we should distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate standards, where the illegitimate ones are distinguished by the fact that they are created or modified primarily to serve the interests of rulers. Huang says that what gives rules legitimacy is the purpose for which they are fashioned, not just tradition or the duty to respect the ancestors who fashioned them. When rules are designed with the interests of the people in mind they tend to be loose and open-ended, for their purpose is not just to control human behavior but also to cultivate virtues. People are more likely to develop virtuous character traits if their orderly conduct is done willingly rather than under threat, and they are more likely to act willingly if they are brought up under a regime of rules that protects their interests. Ironically, it is the rules of self-serving authorities that require greater and greater stringency. Because they rely heavily on coercion and work against the welfare of ordinary people, the policy makers have to create one layer of rules that govern human conduct, then a second layer of rules establishing institutions to enforce the first, then a third layer of rules to enforce those in the second, and so on. The result is a regime with considerably less flexibility and room for human discretion than the proponents of the Xunzian principle envision (YF p. 317).