 Later writers developed accounts of the sources of benevolent behavior, most famously in the context of the discussion of human nature (xing 性) in the centuries after Confucius. Mencius (fourth century BCE) argued that benevolence grows out of the cultivation of an affective disposition to compassion (ceyin 惻隱) in the face of another’s distress. The anonymous author of the late Warring States period excavated text “Five Kinds of Action” (Wu xing 五行) describes it as building from the affection one feels for close family members, through successive stages to finally develop into a more universal, fully-fledged virtue.  In the Analects, however, one comment on human nature emphasizes the importance of nurture: “By nature people are close, by habituation they are miles apart” (17.2), a sentiment that suggests the importance of training one’s dispositions through ritual and the classics in a manner closer to the program of Xunzi (third century BCE). The Analects, however, discusses the incubation of benevolent behavior in family and ritual contexts. You Ruo winds up his discussion of the roots of the way of the gentleman with the rhetorical question: “Is not behaving with filial piety to one’s parents and siblings the root of benevolence?” (1.2). Confucius tells his disciple Yan Yuan 顏淵 that benevolence is a matter of “overcoming oneself and returning to ritual propriety” (12.1). These connections between benevolence and other virtues underscore the way in which benevolent behavior does not entail creating novel social forms or relationships, but is grounded in traditional familial and ritual networks.