 Thus, Huang, Wang, and Gu’s admiration of the ancient past imbued their historicism with a sense of ultimacy achieved once upon a time. While they might not be seeking literal return to the past, they betrayed their yearning for the constant and the transhistorical. Their goal of encrusting measures apposite to current needs with ancient principles suggested that there was more to history than the contingencies and expediencies of any one time.