_Chêng ming_ is highly significant in Confucian thought, and exhibits the striking difference between the Chinese and the older Western political study. If the terms by means of which the communication within a society is effected, and in which the group beliefs of fact or of value are to be found, can be the subject of control, there is opened up a great field of social engineering. _Chêng ming_ states, in recognizable although archaic terms, the existence of ideology, and proposes the strengthening of ideology. In recognizing the group (in his case, mankind) as dependent upon ideology for group existence, Confucius delivered Chinese political thought from any search for an ontology of the _real state_. It became possible to continue, in the traditional pragmatic manner,(35) thinking of men in simple terms referring only to individual men, avoiding the hypostatizations common in the West. In pointing out the necessity for the control of ideology by men, Confucius anticipated theories of the “pedagogical state” by some twenty centuries. _Li_, in the terminology of the present work, is the conformity of the individual to the moral ideology, or, stated in another manner, the control of men by the ideology.(36) _Li_, conformity to the ideology, implies, of course, conformity to those parts of it which determine value. _Li_ prescribes the do-able, the thinkable. In so far as the ideology consists of valuations, so far do those valuations determine _li_. Hsü lists the operations of _li_ in six specific categories: (1) it furnishes the principles of political organization; (2) it furnishes details for the application of the doctrine of ratification; (3) it discusses the functions of government; (4) it prescribes the limitations of governmental authority; (5) it advances principles of social administration; and (6) it provides a foundation for crime and lawsuits. These are only the political functions of _li_. Its force is to be regarded as equally effective in every other type of human behavior.(37) The approach to society contained in the doctrines of _jên_, _chêng ming_, and _li_ is, therefore, one which largely eliminates the necessity for politics. Its influence may be estimated from three points of view: (1) to what degree was government different from what it might have been had it followed the line of development that government did in the West? (2) what was the range of governmental action in such a system? and (3) what was the relation of government to the other institutions of a Confucian society? In regard to the first point, it will be seen immediately that government, once _chêng ming_ has been set in motion, is not a policy-making body. There is no question of policy, no room for disagreement, no alternative. What is right is apparent. Politics, in the narrow sense of the word, ceases to be a function of government; only administration remains.