 Since desires, as integral parts of the physical nature, constituted both the Way of humanity and the Way of heaven, human nature could not be, as the Song masters had contended, bifurcated into its moral-heavenly manifestation and material-earthly disclosure. Dai asserted that the nature, xing, was whole, comprising both blood and breath (xueqi)—the psycho-physiological—and the mind-heart and wisdom (xinzhi)—the cognitive-spiritual.  Both, as a whole, were derived from “yin-yang and the five agents”, and “originated from the process of the production and transformation of heaven-and-earth” (yuan yu tiandi zhi hua). He waxed rhetorical, 