Confucians have always held to the traditions of "morality" and "knowledge." Of these two, morality is the axis of Confucian thought and forms the basis for cultivation of the human character. While the neo-Confucians of the Sung and Ming Dynasties promoted a transcendental concept of morality, the flourishing of textual research during the Ch'ing Dynasty led to the development of an intellectualistic concept of morality among Confucian scholars. Although scholars of the Ch'ing dynasty focused on rationalism rather than strict intellectualism, the development of this rationalism emphasized evidential empirical knowledge. In other words, these scholars embraced a form of intellectualism in which moral concepts are based on knowledge. This new form of morality not only differed greatly from the transcendental metaphysical morality of the Sung/Ming neo-Confucians, but also opened up a path into the empirical world and social morality for the Confucians. This paper uses Chiao Hsun's theory of "intelligence leads to benevolence" as the basis for exploring Ch'ing scholars' concept of intellectualist morality.