 It is not surprising that there should be the kind of ambiguity expressed by the juxtaposition of the water and sprout metaphors in Mencius. A very common contemporary conception of the innate comes very close to the implications of the water metaphor, i.e., that which develops under normal conditions. On the other hand, we are also capable of recognizing that other things develop under a narrower or much more contingent (not necessarily realized in the normal course of affairs) set of conditions. A barley sprout develops only if human beings plant it in the right kind of soil and put effort into cultivating it. Yet it seems intuitively correct to say that its direction of growth is innate. If the conditions for growth are realized, it will become a barley plant, not a corn plant. Contemporary thinking about the innate bases of morality also shows this range of thinking. Claims that morality is constrained by an innate universal grammar (e.g., Hauser, 2008; Mikhail, 2011) seem closer to the idea that the moral (or its underlying universal structure) develops under normal conditions; other conceptions acknowledge more of a role for contingent factors (Nichols, 2004; Haidt and Bjorklund 2008). The ambiguity in Mencius’ thought, then, anticipates contemporary swings in thinking about the relative roles of what human beings are born with and what they acquire through learning, experience and culture.