 We could understand the continuity described in this passage as a temporally connected set of steps: first investigate things, then reach understanding, then make one’s intentions sincere, and so on, eventually putting one’s state in order. But in fact the Neo-Confucians tend to see the steps as mutually constitutive: investigating things just is reaching understanding, families are regulated through the very act of personal cultivation, and having orderly families is part of what it means for a state to be in order. The implicit relationship between personal cultivation and socio-political order is captured in the frequently used slogan “inner sage-outer king”: ethics and governance are two sides of the same coin. In other words, socio-political order entails the ethical transformation of people in the state, as well as their leaders; in the language of the text, this is to “light up the bright virtue of all in the world”.