Mozi, as we noted above, appealed to what he regarded as a natural utility standard to judge the acceptability of yánlanguage use and Confucius relied more on past usage ranging back to the mythical sage kings. Problems of justifying approvals and disapprovals of word usage led such later Confucians as Mencius, to rely more on cultivating an intuition. Since the account of cultivation typically presupposed practice in conformity with the social practice requiring justification, the threat of circularity pushed traditionalists eventually to teach about and appeal to an allegedly innate or pre-social human psychology.