 The Warring States period was an age of comprehensive sociopolitical change, and thinkers of different intellectual affiliations had to come to terms with this change. The majority tried to accommodate it within the framework of the “changing with the times” paradigm (Kern 2000: 170–174): namely, certain innovations and modifications of existent policies are inevitable, but these do not require a radical overhaul of the current sociopolitical system, and do not undermine the usefulness of the past as a guideline for the present. Legalists were much more resolute in their willingness to dispense with traditional modes of rule, and they questioned the very relevance of the past to the present. Their attack on supporters of learning from the past was twofold. First, there was simply no uniform model of orderly rule in the past to be emulated. Second, and more substantially, society evolves, and this evolution turns behavioral modes, institutions, and even values of the past obsolete.