 The Han Feizi also gives us a clearer idea than any earlier text of why rule via standard was to be preferred to rule by the wise and virtuous. Chapter 40 puts readers through the following dialectic. We begin with the idea, attributed to Shen Dao, that virtue and wisdom are unnecessary for good governance; everything depends on “political purchase (shi)” and “status (wei)”. To this a critic responds that “talent (cai)” is also necessary: give power to the unworthy and the result will be chaos. The conclusion follows: when rulers are so good or bad that nothing could change them, we will call that shi-by-nature and set that aside. But such men are rare. The author is interested in the average ruler, for whom shi is crucial. So in the end we are back to Shen Dao’s position as the only tenable one for the vast majority of rulers—and for all the rulers for whom the author’s advice is going to make any difference.