 Where Confucius clearly innovated was in his rationale for performing the rites and music. Historian Yan Buke 閻步克 has argued that the early Confucian (Ru) tradition began from the office of the “Music master” (Yueshi 樂師) described in the Ritual of Zhou (Zhou Li 周禮). Yan’s view is that since these officials were responsible for teaching the rites, music, and the Classic of Odes, it was their combined expertise that developed into the particular vocation that shaped the outlook of Confucius. Early discussions of ritual in the Zhou classics often explained ritual in terms of a do ut des view of making offerings to receive benefits. By contrast, early discussions between Confucius and his disciples described benefits of ritual performance that went beyond the propitiation of spirits, rewards from the ancestors, or the maintenance of the social or cosmic order. Instead of emphasizing goods that were external to the performer, these works stressed the value of the associated interior psychological states of the practitioner. In Analects 3.26, Confucius condemns the performance of ritual without reverence (jing 敬). He also condemns views of ritual that focus only on the offerings, or views of music that focus only on the instruments (17.11). Passages from the Records of Ritual explain that Confucius would rather have an excess of reverence than an excess of ritual (“Tangong, shang” 檀弓上), and that reverence is the most important aspect of mourning rites (“Zaji, xia” 雜記下). This emphasis on the importance of an attitude of reverence became the salient distinction between performing ritual in a rote manner, and performing it in the proper affective state. Another passage from the Records of Ritual says the difference between how an ideal gentleman and a lesser person cares for a parent is that the gentleman is reverent when he does it (“Fangji” 坊記, cf. Analects 2.7). In contexts concerning both ritual and filial piety (xiao 孝), the affective state behind the action is arguably more important than the action’s consequences. As Philip J. Ivanhoe has written, ritual and music are not just an indicator of values in the sense that these examples show, but also an inculcator of them.