 In sum, a vitalist sensibility animated the philosophical thoughts of many a Qing thinker, placing qi and its manifestations at the center of life and the world. But we must bear in mind the caveat that such thinking amounted to no materialism or naturalism in the western philosophical sense of the words. Material human desires in themselves were never considered to be a principle, even though they were conceived as integral and authentic components of a holistic nature. Nevertheless, if it was not full-fledged formal philosophy, the qi-based worldview was a fundamental attitude and disposition that located life’s meanings, possibilities, and motives in the actualities of the corporeal world. As qi dislodged the importance of li, knowledge acquired through the senses’ commerce with the workaday world (wenjian zhi zhi), as opposed to moral knowledge attained through intuitive knowing of the virtuous nature (dexing zhi zhi), claimed priority. In an a-metaphysical age that was the Qing, there was no triumph of qi-oriented thinking qua philosophy, but a vitalist ontology did furnish a criterion of intelligibility that undergirded the other modes of intellection—historicism, utilitarianism, intellectualism.