Liangzhi, usually rendered innate knowing or the good conscience, is Wang Yangming's central term, borrowed from Mencius's phrase for knowledge one has without deliberation. His claim is that every person possesses an immediate, pre-reflective moral knowing that registers right and wrong before any reasoning takes place, and that it is never absent, only obscured by selfish desire — so moral work consists of clearing the obstruction rather than acquiring anything. This is joined to the unity of knowledge and action: to know filial piety and not act filially is not to know it, and the two are one process rather than a sequence. The implication that alarmed the Zhu Xi establishment is that if moral knowledge is immediate and universally possessed, the long curriculum of textual study is not the road to sagehood, and the examination system's claim to identify moral quality weakens. The Taizhou school that developed from Wang took exactly that implication and taught butchers and firewood sellers, which is where the establishment's alarm proved well founded.