rvives in their system of
metaphysics. For all their attempts at fathoming the secrets of nature
are based on the idea that male or female powers are inherent in all
matter.

To the same Emperor Fu-hi are ascribed many of the elementary inventions
which raise man from the life of a brute to that of a social being. He
taught his people to hunt, to fish, and to keep flocks; he constructed
musical instruments, and replaced a kind of knot-writing previously in
use by a system of hieroglyphics. All this cannot of course be
considered as history; but it shows that the authors of later centuries
who credited Fu-hi with certain inventions were not quite illogical in
starting from the matriarchal chaos, after which he is said to have
organized society with occupations corresponding to those of a period of
hunting, fishing and herding. This period was bound to be followed by a
further step towards the final development of the nation's social
condition; and we find it quite logically succeeded by a period of
agricultural life, personified in the Emperor, Shoen-nung, supposed to
have lived in the twenty-eighth century B.C. His name may be freely
translated as "Divine Labourer"; and to him the Chinese ascribe the
invention of agricultural implements, and the discovery of the medicinal
properties of numerous plants.

The third historical emperor was Huang-ti, the "Yellow emperor,"
according to the literal translation. Ssi-ma Ts'ien, the Herodotus of
the Chinese, begins his history with him; but Fu-hi and Shoen-nung are
referred to in texts much older than this historian, though many details
relating to their alleged reigns have been added in later times.
Huang-ti extended the boundaries of the empire, described as being
originally confined to a limited territory near the banks of the Yellow
river and the present city of Si-an-fu. Here were the sites of cities
used as capitals of the empire under various names during long periods
since remote antiquity. To Huang-ti, whose reign is said to have
commenced in 2704 according to one source and in 2491 according to
another, are ascribed most of the cultural innovations which historians
were not able otherwise to locate within historical times. Under
Huang-ti we find the first mention of a nation called the Hun-yue, who
occupied the north of his empire and with whom he is represented to have
engaged in warfare. The Chinese identify this name with that of the
Hiung-nu, their old hereditary