 In contrast to Confucius, Mo Di (ca 650–200 BC), the founder of the Mohist school, questioned the existence of an ideal language (the essence of the notion ming) to which (external) reality and society had to adapt. Instead of shaping social interactions according to language standards, which Confucians viewed as incorporating the essential structure of natural order and humaneness, the Mohists adopted the opposite approach, arguing that since language was a means for transmitting realities, it was language which had to adjust to such realities and not vice-versa. According to Mo Di, the criteria for such adjustment had to be based on actual social needs, and not on the idealized and alien models of a bygone era.