 Moral-ritual teachings were the very stuff and source of governance. When Zhang urged that post-antiquity history be examined independently of the Six Classics, he did not aim at demolishing the classics’ sacral authority. He only cautioned against any literal usage of them in historical endeavors, which could swamp all sense of change after the Three Dynasties. Zhang enjoined us to “value summing up the essence of the principles of the Six Classics and narrate events in time in order to probe the great dao” (WSTY: 42). History, in a sense, was the unfurling of this authoritative “great Way” (dadao), the meanings and messages of which were expounded in the classics: 