 As the cases of Dai Zhen and Zhang Xuecheng show, Qing thought involved the rethinking of the individual as a historical being who verified the validity of institutions and laws through the authority of history, resisting values and norms that were conceived as the formulaic good applied to all times and cases. Yet, it dislodged no telos of the ancient Way, as a mainspring of Qing philosophy was surely the retrieval of the dao of the classics. Historicism as a means of evaluating the past achieved no hegemony. What occurred was a critical hermeneutical exploration of the ancient classics and writings. Within the boundaries of the inherited intellectual tradition, the classicist endeavors bred a historicist sensibility, problematizing the nature of the Way as the embodiment of truth-in/above-history. This historicism signified a discursive tension that placed a strain on an intellectual field, but one nevertheless circumscribed by age-old Confucian values.