The 1898 reform movement was an effort at institutional change on the part of ranking literati close to the throne. Where it had been directed at the inherited political order, the intellectual campaign for a totally 'new culture', which was symbolized by the May Fourth demonstrations of 1919, was seen as an attack upon the traditional moral and social orders. Filtered through the interpretive matrix of reform cosmology, science and democracy appeared to be the material and social manifestations of a total cosmic order linked to the ultimate ends of ta-t'ung. The history of neo-traditionalism through the May Fourth period saw the gradual supplanting of the first connotation by the second. Between the reform and the movement, three neo-traditional currents may be discerned, each with its own strategy for adapting Confucianism and the classical heritage to modern conditions. They were the National Essence movement, Liang Ch'i-ch'ao's call for 'new people' and modern relevance of the central spiritual symbols of Confucianism.