 While the virtues of benevolence and righteousness might impel a gentleman to adhere to ritual norms in particular situations or areas of life, a third virtue of “ritual propriety” expresses a sensitivity to one’s social place, and willingness to play all of one’s multiple ritual roles. The term li translated here as “ritual propriety” has a particularly wide range of connotations, and additionally connotes both the conventions of ritual and etiquette. In the Analects, Confucius is depicted both teaching and conducting the rites in the manner that he believed they were conducted in antiquity. Detailed restrictions such as “the gentleman avoids wearing garments with red-black trim” (10.6), which the poet Ezra Pound disparaged as “verses re: length of the night-gown and the predilection for ginger” (Pound 1951: 191), were by no means trivial to Confucius. His imperative, “Do not look or listen, speak or move, unless it is in accordance with the rites” (12.1), in answer to a question about benevolence, illustrates how the symbolic conventions of the ritual system played a role in the cultivation of the virtues. We have seen how ritual shapes values by restricting desires, thereby allowing reflection and the cultivation of moral dispositions. Yet without the proper affective state, a person is not properly performing ritual. In the Analects, Confucius says he cannot tolerate “ritual without reverence, or mourning without grief,” (3.26). When asked about the root of ritual propriety, he says that in funerals, the mourners’ distress is more important than the formalities (3.4). Knowing the details of ritual protocols is important, but is not a substitute for sincere affect in performing them. Together, they are necessary conditions for the gentleman’s training, and are also essential to understanding the social context in which Confucius taught his disciples.