Thanks! It turns out I should've known that, because it's almost the beginning of the 3-character classic, as a 6-character rather than an 8- chengyu: 性相近，習相遠。

Thanks! It turns out I should've known that, because it's almost the beginning of the 3-character classic, as a 6-character rather than an 8- chengyu: 性相近，習相遠。 Looks like Confucius basically used 也 as padding for alignment? (精益求精?) https://ctext.org/three-character-classic https://ctext.org/three-character-classic (I've read a translation of this line that went something like "people are all born good, but just look what happens to them after they've lived in society a while"; it's certainly more beautiful but I don't know how faithful it may be...)