 The Confucians held that the remedy to China’s turmoil and chaos lay in wise and morally excellent rulers—that moral excellence would ripple downwards from the top and create harmony and prosperity. The Daodejing upholds a vision of an original harmony that human beings once had, a way that consisted in living in accord with the natural grain of things, and that involves seeking only what one truly needs, not in multiplying useless desires that only agitate and ultimately make us unhappy. The Legalists rejected moral and spiritual transformation, of either the Confucian or Laoist kind, as the solution to China’s troubles. Most human beings will remain unlovely beings to the end, and governmental structures must be designed for such beings. The sort of structure recommended is a highly centralized government in which the ruler retains firm control of the “two handles” of government: punishment and favor (chapter 7). By making sure he always has his own hands on these handles, the ruler remains in firm control of his ministers. If a minister proposes a way to get something done, measure his performance on whether he gets it done in the way he says he will. If not, punish him. The ruler is to hold his officials strictly to the definitions of their role responsibilities, so that they are punished not only when they fail to perform some of those assigned responsibilities but also when they do more than their assigned responsibilities.