 The prominent figures in Song-Ming Confucianism held divergent and often mutually inconsistent views about each of the major issues of their era, but they participated in a shared discourse with a great deal of overlapping philosophical vocabulary and points of reference. Moreover they tended to treat certain issues as more central than others. Chief among these were questions about the sources of unity and order in the cosmos, moral aspects of human nature, how one’s subjective thoughts and feelings can and should align with (objective or less problematically subject-dependent) ethical norms, the methods and means of cultivating virtues, and the sort of institutions and character necessary for good governance. There were some areas of consensus. Confucians of this period tended to agree that the family is in various respects the primary locus of moral development and the expression of virtue. They also shared the view that human nature is fundamentally good, having well-formed capacities for virtue and being linked in some profound way to broader processes of life production and nurturance. Most regarded a certain body of classical Confucian texts as correct, including those they attributed to Confucius (Kongzi) and Mencius (Mengzi), although how much and in what ways one should defer to the authority of these texts was often contested.