 Gu criticized his contemporaries for pursuing what was to him empty and abstract “Chan Buddhist learning” (Chanxue), since they relied on the “records of dialogues” (yulu) of the Song-Ming scholars and ignored the classics, which were the ben of learning, that is, the root, substance, and basis. He rejected the totalizing methodology of yiguan zhi fa (the way of connecting everything), which was the epistemological orientation of Song-Ming learning that eschewed and swamped concrete particulars. Instead, Gu called for “duoxue er shi (to get to know through multifarious learning)” and “duojian er shi (to get to know through multifarious observation)”, such that one achieved “boxue yu wen (erudition in all writings)” (Gu GTLSWJ: 43–44). To him, the classics recorded and consisted of nothing but “what the sages had heard and seen (shengren suowen suojian)” (Gu RZL: 37–38). His intellectualist stance was a classic expression of “following the way of learning and inquiry” (dao wenxue), involving empirical observations and painstaking accumulation of broad knowledge.