 Wang Fuzhi also repudiated the Neo-Confucian epistemological assertions of the possibility of mingjie (esoteric understanding) and miaowu (mysterious enlightenment), both which were anti-intellectualist in conception, in that they referred to direct intuitive apprehension of the truth without the intervention of actual study. He insisted that “the principles of the multitudinous things cannot be known without learning and cannot be distinguished without erudition”. Knowledge, for Wang, came from our direct engagement with and experience of the “changing external forms” (kexing) in the universe, such as 