 Another candidate for this “proto-Daoist” status, Yang Zhu, we know mainly from Mencian attacks. According to Mencius, Yang Zhu derived opposition to society and politics from an ethical egoism (emphasizing “me”). Angus Graham has influentially (and controversially) reconstructed Yang Zhu’s ideas, but they too do not include explicit meta-theorizing about the nature of dao. Yangism mainly proposes a (shocking!) rival first order normative dao—egoism. Yangist echoes surface prominently in the Laozi and in huge chunks of the “outer chapters” of the Zhuangzi. At its core is an arguably Daoist worry that social conventions and structures damage our natural spontaneity and interfere with efficient functioning of our natural powers. Early Chinese moral theory flowed too easily between mores and morality and we may see the lure of Daoist impartiality in the Yangist desire to dispense with relative social mores.