 As the reference to Kongzi suggests, this tendency toward inclusivity threatened the humanistic ethics of the Confucians. Their main response addressed a gap in the cosmogonies exemplified by the Laozi. These explained the dynamism inherent in particular things and the broader patterns of nature, but they did not address the differences between kinds of things—what makes human beings differ consistently from dogs? The concept that arose to fill this gap and to justify Confucian humanism is xing 性. Xing is most often translated as the “nature” of a thing or kind of thing, but it refers specifically to the way a thing responds spontaneously to its environment. In human beings, xing manifests itself primarily as desires and emotions, broadly labeled as qing 情 (genuine affects). One of the key questions debated by the Confucians was the degree to which ethical concerns like care, respect, and shame were embedded in these natural spontaneous affects.