ve proceeded to an attack
on the dominance of the gentry and their oppression especially of the
merchants and artisans. It is fascinating to observe how it was the
needs of the merchants and seafarers of Asia Minor and Greece that
provided the stimulus for the growth of the classic sciences, and how on
the contrary the growth of Chinese science was stifled because the
gentry were so strongly hostile to commerce and navigation, though both
had always existed.

There were great literary innovations in the field of poetry. The
splendour and elegance at the new imperial court of the Han dynasty
attracted many poets who sang the praises of the emperor and his court
and were given official posts and dignities. These praises were in the
form of grandiloquent, overloaded poetry, full of strange similes and
allusions, but with little real feeling. In contrast, the many women
singers and dancers at the court, mostly slaves from southern China,
introduced at the court southern Chinese forms of song and poem, which
were soon adopted and elaborated by poets. Poems and dance songs were
composed which belonged to the finest that Chinese poetry can show--full
of natural feeling, simple in language, moving in content.

Our knowledge of the arts is drawn from two sources--literature, and the
actual discoveries in the excavations. Thus we know that most of the
painting was done on silk, of which plenty came into the market through
the control of silk-producing southern China. Paper had meanwhile been
invented in the second century B.C., by perfecting the techniques of
making bark-cloth and felt. Unfortunately nothing remains of the actual
works that were the first examples of what the Chinese everywhere were
beginning to call "art". "People", that is to say the gentry, painted as
a social pastime, just as they assembled together for poetry,
discussion, or performances of song and dance; they painted as an
aesthetic pleasure and rarely as a means of earning. We find philosophic
ideas or greetings, emotions, and experiences represented by
paintings--paintings with fanciful or ideal landscapes; paintings
representing life and environment of the cultured class in idealized
form, never naturalistic either in fact or in intention. Until recently
it was an indispensable condition in the Chinese view that an artist
must be "cultured" and be a member of the gentry--distinguished,
unoccupied, wealthy. A man who was paid for his work, for instance