The five constants — ren, yi, li, zhi, xin — were fixed as a set by the Han scholar Dong Zhongshu, correlated with the five phases and the five directions in the manner of Han cosmology. Ren carries the most weight and resists definition: the character combines the graph for person with the number two, and it is variously rendered benevolence, humaneness, co-humanity or simply goodness. Confucius answers questions about it differently every time — to one disciple it is to love others, to another it is to overcome oneself and return to ritual, to a third it is to be respectful in private, reverent in handling affairs and loyal in dealings with others — and he never gives a general formula, which later commentators have treated as either evasion or method. Yi, rightness, is the sense of what a situation requires irrespective of advantage, and the tension between yi and li — between doing what is right and doing what is prescribed — is the productive problem the tradition returns to rather than an inconsistency it apologises for.