 Xunzi’s rituals have such an important role to play in our emotional and moral development that he spends an entire chapter limning what are essentially rituals of artistic expression. The term he uses is “music” (yue), which is distinct from ritual, but Xunzi’s conception of their origin and purpose is so similar that we can scarcely speak of one without the other. Thus “ritual and music” (liyue) can only be understood as two aspects of human artifice (wei): “ritual” refers to cultural forms that affect social cohesion, “music” to those involving the orderly expression of human emotions. The crucial point is that the sages created both.