 In traditional China, the Confucian literati did not consider thought and learning to be separate from action in the public world at large. They were, in fact, much inspired by a beatific vision of a public space in which social and political actions yielded a world of peace and order. In the classic text, Doctrine of the Mean (Zhongyong), the profound paradigmatic person (junzi) is described as one who reverently realizes one’s virtuous, heaven-conferred nature, and pursues inquiry and learning. The Great Learning (Daxue) further tells us that these efforts have a three-pronged end: cultivating the self (xiuxin), ordering the state (zhiguo), and bringing peace to the world (ping tianxia). Thus, the individuated internal goal of achieving sagehood (neisheng) is inextricably bound to the outer concerns of implementing the Way of kingship (waiwang). In contradistinction to Plato’s or even Hegel’s otherworldly philosophy—Plato saw the philosopher as one whose body (not mind) inhabited the city of his fellow human beings, and Hegel viewed philosophy as a world stood on its head, from the vantage point of commonsense—Confucianism regarded the world of workaday affairs as coterminous with the world of ideas in which thinkers dwelled. The abiding ideal of “ordering the world and extending utility” (jingshi zhiyong) demanded the conjugation of private moral cultivation and its public realization. In Qing philosophy, there was this palpable intellectual purport based on the utilitarian ideal of ordering the world, which bred a moral seriousness about the everyday realities of society and state. This utilitarianism posited an intimate relation between thought and action, regarding as insignificant or irrelevant metaphysical concepts that resisted translation into some form of effort leading to concrete outcomes. The corollaries of xue (learning) and zhi (knowing) were yong (utility) and xing (action).