 A second reason for the complexity of the topics related to this entry is that some knowledge of the early philosophical—and other—texts were and are prerequisite for understanding all later philosophy because of the frequency of the references to them, and also because they provided the basic model for the writing of the later ones. Unfortunately most of these early Chinese texts have come down to us only in corrupted form, increasing significantly the number and variety of issues and problems of translating and interpreting them, especially if our primary concern is to provide exegeses and translations of them in terms of what they meant to the people who first wrote and read them.