 Zhang Zai’s cosmology echoes the earlier Chinese cosmologies discussed in Section 3. To say that the nature of qi is active differentiation is to say that the nature of qi is sheng, vitality or generation. This emphasis on being as a force of growth and vitality was a common point among Neo-Confucians, linked directly to the virtue of ren 仁, humaneness or benevolence. To be humane is to support and extend the generative process of nature itself. Furthermore, there is a unity to things in the world, grounded in the fact that they are all made up of qi and they unfold in interlocking patterns of influence. As Zhang Zai puts it in the famous Western Inscription: