 In many passages of the Analects, Confucius (551–479 BCE) states that true virtue comes out of a genuine affective state of the mind. He emphasizes that carefully focused affective state is an essential component of Confucian virtue. Although Confucius does not make any explicit connection between qing and emotions, his general approach to emotions and virtue through the genuineness or sincerity of the mind makes an implicit connection between qing and emotions in the cultivation of virtue: virtue should reflect the affective genuineness that emerges from the essence (qing) of humanity. From this moral-psychological viewpoint, one can understand how qing comes to include subjective feelings and emotions and, at the same time, still refers to the essential human nature in early Confucian philosophy.