 A group of thinkers that was frequently disparaged by many mainstream Neo-Confucians was the “Taizhou school” of Confucianism, named after the place in which its purported founder, Wang Gen (1483–1541), lived and taught. Although the philosophers most often identified with this school were an eclectic bunch, pedagogical connections to Wang Gen and some similarities in ideology and scholarly temperament make it convenient to group these thinkers together. Wang Gen and many of his disciples were distinguished by their commitment to the popularization of Confucianism. Wang Gen himself had studied with Wang Yangming and took seriously the idea that all people have innate capacities for moral knowledge and sagehood, capacities which, on his interpretation, do not depend on formal education and book learning to be accessed. Sagehood could be realized through the “everyday practices of the common people” (baixing riyong 百姓日用) and it was the mission of many Taizhou thinkers to bring this about. Taizhou Confucians also brooked more dramatic departures from Confucian orthodoxy and tended to see greater consonance between Confucianism, Daoism, and Buddhism (Peterson 1998: 723–732, 745–754; de Bary 1970: 157–171; MRXA 32.1a–7b).