 If we take the relevant passages on li and ren as forming a whole in which a coherent view is embedded, there is a pretty good case for regarding the observance of ritual propriety as a constituent of ren as well as crucial for instrumentally realizing some other dimensions of ren. But it does not exhaust the substance of ren. If the text is as radically accretive as the Brooks maintain, then the proposed construal of the relation is more of a reconstruction of what the best philosophical position might be on the nature of the relation. The reconstructive possibility should not be disturbing as long as we recognize it for what it is. Thinkers within a complex and vigorous tradition frequently re-interpret, expand, develop, revise, and even reject some of what one has inherited from the past. The fact that the Analects itself might be a product of this kind of engagement might usefully be taken as encouragement for its present students to engage with the text in the same way.