 A potential source of confusion arises from the fact that humaneness is sometimes used in a more fundamental and all-encompassing sense, where it refers not to the virtue of loving or caring about the welfare of others, but to the virtue of harmonizing with or fitting into a larger system of mutual life-generativity, understood as correctly participating in a system in which each person’s life contributes appropriately to the life of others (BXZY 70; Angle &amp; Tiwald 2017: 162–163). Humaneness in this more fundamental sense does not necessarily need to be motivated by love or care—one can exhibit the virtue of harmonizing with the larger whole even while acting out of a sense of shame (as righteousness requires), or reverence (as ritual propriety requires). But there is a sense in which we exhibit the virtue of mutual life-generativity even when acting righteously or ritually proper. On an interpretation suggested by Zhu Xi, this is because all of the other virtues can be seen as getting their purpose and value from their part in contributing to mutual life-generativity, much as the life-production of the springtime gives purpose and value to the summer, autumn, and winter (ZZYL 20:694; Angle &amp; Tiwald 2017: 166–167).