 The mid-Qing witnessed the predominance of the intellectualist pursuit of evidential research (kaozheng), with particular regard to the exegetical and philological investigations of the classics, driven by the fundamentalist goal to retrieve the antique Way enshrined in the classical texts. Nevertheless, when the classics and antiquity were subjected to meticulous scrutiny and rigorous examination, the ancient past came to be interrogated and problematized. Which were the authentic classics? Which part of antiquity was to be restored? How should we go about apprehending the past? Therefore, what began as a classicization of antiquity aimed at cutting through the Neo-Confucian metaphysical babel ended as a partial historicization of the classics. The ancient past and the classics became objects in time to be studied, thereby given their historicity. The works and thoughts of Dai Zhen (1724–77) and Zhang Xuecheng (1738–1801) exemplified the historicist temper of the time.