 While it seemed evident that utilitarian thinking that actively combatted moral intuitionism predominated in the early Qing in the seventeenth century, its edges might have been dulled in the eighteenth century. The conventional explanation is that scholars channeled their energy into the sort of pedantic studies of philology and classical texts, as represented by the so-called movement of evidential learning (kaozheng xue) that received the court’s approval and encouragement. But it is a very partial view that fails to convey the whole picture, as utilitarian thinking was in fact alive and well among the kaozheng practitioners and partisans, many of whom continued to see the classics as guides to ordering the world. Qian Daxin (1728–1804), a towering figure in the kaozheng movement, touted the practical value of these ancient texts: 