 With virtually no exceptions, Neo-Confucians accepted hereditary monarchy as their form of government. This does not mean that all monarchs automatically enjoyed full legitimacy, however. Already in the latter half of the Tang dynasty, Confucian and Buddhist scholars had begun to claim that the proper moral or spiritual teaching was passed on in a genealogical fashion (Wilson 1995). Han Yu (768–824) famously asserted that this transmission of the Confucian “Way” had been lost for many centuries; Northern Song progenitors of Neo-Confucianism argued that it was only in their generation that the Way had been recovered. In other words, legitimate succession from one monarch to another did not assure that individual rulers—or even their dynasty as a whole—were following the Way. Zhu Xi (1130–1200) gives this idea its most influential formulation when he says that the “succession of the Way (daotong)” comes to those who are able to grasp the deep truths embedded in the classics by the early sages. According to this view, the earliest sages both grasped the Way and ruled, but over time rulers lost this tie to the moral Way. A few great teachers like Confucius and Mencius understood the Way and tried to steer their societies in the right direction, even though they were not rulers, but eventually the succession of the Way was lost until it was recovered, says Zhu Xi, by the Cheng brothers (Cheng Hao [1032–1085] and Cheng Yi [1033–1107]).