 Another important issue dealt with in Wang’s work is that of human nature or inborn characteristics (xing 性), which is intertwined with a number of concepts, including agency and allotment (ming 命). Wang develops an account of human agency that is remarkably innovative for his time, drawing a contrast between agency and “spontaneity” or self-action (ziran 自然). Wang is concerned with the ways in which the kind of moral cultivation discussed in earlier texts such as those of the Confucians can make a difference in human behaviors and in the outcomes resulting from these behaviors. Can we, through the kinds of practices the Confucians enjoin, rectify and change our behavior so as to produce different effects than those that otherwise would have resulted? To accept that human activity can make such a difference in the world seems to conflict with another idea of antiquity, that all of us are bound by our allotment (ming), which is governed by the world. Wang attempts to square these two conflicting ideas in numerous chapters of the Lunheng.