 In his own era, Mencius’s views were criticized by the Daoist Zhuangzi and by his fellow Confucian Xunzi. Zhuangzi never refers to Mencius by name, but several passages seem to clearly be directed at him. In a passage that argues against the possibility of objective ethical knowledge, Zhuangzi states, “From where I see it, the sprouts of benevolence and righteousness and the pathways of right and wrong are all snarled and jumbled” (Zhuangzi 2; Ivanhoe and Van Norden 2005, 222). The phrase “sprouts of benevolence and righteousness” (rén yì zhī duān) is quite unusual, and many translators struggle to make sense of  it.[23]  The key is to remember Mencius’s phrases “sprout of benevolence” (rén zhī duān) and “sprout of righteousness” (yì zhī duān) from 2A6. While Mencius compares our innate but incipient dispositions toward virtue to the sprouts of plants, which must be cultivated in order to reach maturity, Zhuangzi suggests that there is no way to disentangle “sprouts” from weeds, if there even is any non–arbitrary distinction between them. Another implicit critique of Mencius is found in a fictional dialogue in which Zhuangzi uses “Confucius” as the spokesperson for his own views, and advises someone, “Do not listen with your heart but listen with your qì. … The heart stops with signs. Qi is empty and waits on external things. Only the Way gathers in emptiness. Emptiness is the fasting of the heart” (modified from Ivanhoe and Van Norden 2005, 228). So Zhuangzi prioritizes following the qi, the impersonal fluid that flows through all things and binds them together, over following the heart. This seems to be a deliberate inversion of Mencius’s view in 2A2, where he advises, “What you do not get from your heart, do not seek for in the qi” (2A2; Van Norden 2008, 37). Notice also that, whereas Mencius encourages us to cultivate our heart, Zhuangzi encourages us to “fast”  it.[24]