The many royal princes of the Han time 漢 possessed each his own kingdom. One of them was Liu An 劉安 (d. 122 BC), who patronized a dozen Daoist scholars and let them compile a book with their interpretings of every aspect in human life and cosm. It is an exuberant research for a true standard of the nature of dao 道 "the Way", and its deepness made later scholars give the book the subtitle "Explanation of the Greatness and theLuminosity" Honglie jie 鴻烈解. For the authors of the Huainanzi 淮南子 , the fundamental essences of man are an ethereal part (jing 精), second condensed material substance that gives instinct to man (qi 氣), and third mind, spirit or conscience (shen 神). The fundamental director of this threefold combination is man's will to choose his own path of life, of which the best is THE WAY (dao 道). The cosm with its most important parts, the triade Heaven, Earth and Man (tian-di-ren 天地人), is born out of the three essences and can only be maintained by entire harmony and identity with the Way. The human body itself is a microcosm, a miniature of the universe, and to keep it sane by guarding one's own mind is the foremost task of human being. Doing this and following the Way, one is able to become a True Man (zhenren 真人) or a Perfect Man (zhiren 至人). The True Man has to behave as if others did not exist for his sake, thus having freedom of life. But forgetting others does not mean neglecting them or not to care for others. Inherit the nature of the Way means to obtain purity, tranquillity, rest and unity with nature and the universe, being emptied of useless things and being able to act without force ("not acting", wuwei 無為).
The Huainanzi is an eclectic collection of treatises on many topics, with a clear preference for Daoist matters. But the work is likewise unique in containing some of the earliest passages on Chinese cosmology (Yin-Yang, Five Phases).