 The developmental approach to the question of the Ming-Qing intellectual transition based on the notion of continuity appears in Feng Youlan’s (1895–1990) classic survey of Chinese philosophy (1934 [1952–1953]), ably translated into English by the late Derk Bodde (1909–2003). Feng regarded Han learning in the Qing as innovative and creative thinking, but he also insisted that it was a continuation of Song-Ming Neo-Confucianism because it produced no new metaphysical categories. More thoroughgoing in arguing on behalf of the linkage between Qing learning and Song learning was the eminent Qian Mu (1895–1990). To Qian (1937), the early Qing savants did actually uphold the Song cultural ideals, but he pointed out that the dominant scholastic Han learning and evidential scholarship of the later Qianjia period (the period of the reigns of the Qianlong and Jiaqing emperors, 1736–1820) strayed from the true moral way and political commitments of the late Ming and early Qing. The most sustained effort to interpret the intimate nexus between Song-Ming Confucianism and Qing thought is found in the seminal trilogy of volumes (Bary 1970, 1975; Bary &amp; Bloom 1979) on Ming and Qing thought, edited by the late dean of Neo-Confucian Studies, Wm. Theodore de Bary (1919–2017), which examine the roots and nature of the intellectual transformation in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in terms of its intimate ties with Song-Ming antecedents. This thesis of continuity is eloquently restated by Qian Mu’s eminent student Yü Ying-shih, who interprets the novelty of late imperial Chinese learning with reference to its organic relation with Song-Ming Confucianism by delineating the inner logic of Confucian thinking. As Yü claims, “Intellectualism”, or the ideal of “following the way of inquiry and learning” (dao wenxue), took center stage in late imperial thought, whereas in Song-Ming times, “anti-intellectualism”, or the ideal of “honoring one’s heaven-endowed moral nature” (zun dexing) predominated (Yü 1975: 105–136).