 Confucius’ teachings were advanced by various disciples in the late-Zhou period, the most systematic being Mengzi (371–289 B.C.E.), known most commonly in the west by his Latinized name, Mencius. A text by the same name conveys Mencius’ most important elaborations of Confucian philosophy. Undoubtedly the most significant contribution Mencius made to Confucian thought was his unequivocal affirmation that human nature is, at birth, good. Confucius had observed that people are alike by birth, but differ in practice. However, it was not entirely clear how or in what sense people were actually alike. Mencius argued for the inborn goodness of humanity, noting how that goodness issued naturally from a mind endowed with the beginnings of humaneness, righteousness, propriety, and wisdom. Yet, Mencius also acknowledged that evil, all too evident in the world, resulted when people abandoned the beginnings of goodness they were born with. The project of Confucian learning as Mencius described it was to maintain this mind of goodness and recover it if lost. This Mencian view of the inherent goodness of human nature won out over the opposing view of his influential Confucian contemporary Xunzi. (See entry on “Xunzi,” Sect 2).