Tian — Heaven — is not a personal god in Confucianism but an impersonal moral order that legitimizes and withdraws legitimacy. The Mandate of Heaven made this politically explosive: a ruler holds power conditionally on virtue, and a dynasty's fall is retroactive evidence that the mandate was lost, which makes successful rebellion self-justifying. Confucius himself was famously reticent about spirits and the afterlife — asked about serving the dead, he said: you cannot yet serve the living.