Shen resolved hair-splitting litigation through wu wei, or not getting involved, making an official's words his own responsibility. Shen Buhai says, "The ruler controls the policy, the ministers manage affairs. To speak ten times and ten times be right, to act a hundred times and a hundred times succeed – this is the business of one who serves another as minister; it is the not the way to rule." The correlation between wu wei and ming-shih likely informed the Taoist conception of the formless Tao that "gives rise to the ten thousand things."