Tao can be literally translated into English as the "path", or the "way'. It is principally indefinable. It refers to a kind of power which envelops, surrounds and flows through all the living and non-living things. The Tao regulates natural processes and nourishes balance in the universe. It embodies the harmony of opposites (i.e. there would be no love without hate, no light without dark, no male without female.) Classical Taoist philosophy, formulated by Laozi, the anonymous editor of the Daodejing (Classic of the Way and its Power), and Zhuangzi, was a reinterpretation and development of an ancient nameless tradition of nature worship and divination. Laozi and Zhuangzi, living at a time of social disorder and great religious skepticism (see article on Confucianism), developed the notion of the Dao (Tao -- way, or path) as the origin of all creation and the force -- unknowable in its essence but observable in its manifestations -- that lies behind the functioning and changes of the natural world.