"Beyond history and into the Tao" means that if you want to know the common sense of the world, you must study history first. From Gong Zizhen's respect for history. "If you want to know the way, you must make history first. This is not what I heard, but what Liu Xiang and Ban Gu heard. "

On the surface, Respect for History discusses the position and important role of a historian, but in fact it is a political commentary advocating social criticism and attacking authoritarian rule. He discussed the relationship between historiography and politics, and thought that historians were "professional language and slanderers", that is, they were the mouthpiece of society, and further expounded the proposition of "respecting history".