 The first chapter of the Xinyu discusses the foundation of the political project (and the human project more generally) in nature, or “heaven” (tian 天), borrowing a well-known and contentious concept from earlier Chinese philosophical discourse. The dao 道 (way) of proper action and governance here is associated with understanding the patterns (li 理) of heaven and earth. Lu Jia offers a “realist” conception of political and ethical principles (which early Chinese thinkers see as continuous for the most part). These principles are based in the mind-independent world, rather than dependent on human construction. Of course, the distinction between mind and world is not heavily stressed in early China. Although early Chinese philosophers did draw a distinction between mind and body (Slingerland 2019; McLeod 2021), we do not find the strong distinction between mind-dependence and independence that ground conceptions of antirealism and realism in contemporary Western philosophical discourse. The construction of dao (as political and ethical principles) is dependent on the nature of the world, including facts about patterns (li) as they exist within and determine human activity. Both “mind” and “world”, that is, are responsible for the dao. This is expressed in the Xinyu as a matter of the ancient sages’ expression of what they discern in the cosmos/heaven (tian). Lu Jia gives us a succinct explanation of this: