how all this came about we cannot tell. The early kings are
men of piety, inventors of arts, and authors of fundamental maxims of
policy; but as time went on the kings grew worse and lost the
affections of their people. In the twelfth century B.C. the Chow
dynasty came into power and gave China some of its best rulers, but
it also soon fell off; the country broke up into a number of separate
feudal principalities over which the central government lost all
control, and in the sixth century Confucius is found wandering from
one independent state to another. This confusion led in the third
century B.C. to the displacement of the Chow by the Tsin dynasty.
Shi-Hoang-Ti, fourth ruler of this line, one of the strongest rulers
China ever had, assumed the title of Universal Emperor. He beat back
the enemies of China beyond the frontier, began the building of the
great wall, and broke down the power of the feudal rulers. It was
found, however, that the feudal system still lived in the affections
of the people, and as it was the religious books which mainly kept
the past in veneration, the emperor ordered their destruction and
enforced the edict with great rigour. The House of Han, however,
which replaced that of Tsin in 206 B.C., recovered the ancient
literature of the country from the hiding-places where copies of the
books had been preserved, and established in accordance with them the
very conservative constitution which has lasted to this day.

Sources.--The books thus condemned and thus recovered supply us with
our knowledge of ancient China and of its religion. They are
political rather than religious in their nature. China has no Bible,
no book guarded by the ministers of religion as the basis of the
system they conduct; the religious teachers of China, if there are
any, are the literati, the books they preserve and study are the
Classics. These are connected with the name of Confucius, who
collected or edited them, and himself wrote one of them. They are not
thought to be inspired, but are revered because of their immemorial
antiquity. No people was ever more completely under the influence of
a book, or set of books, than the Chinese. The learned class, who
constitute the only nobility of China, receive their whole education
from the books ascribed to Confucius; which, like other authoritative
literatures, contain matter of various kinds.

The Chinese collection consists of the five Classics (King) and the
four books (