ears
of wall-building,--which meant death. That, too, was the penalty
for concealing books. He was now in dead earnest that the Past
should go, and history begin again; to be read forever afterwards
in this order,--the Creation, the Reign of Ts'in Shi Hwangti.

But he spared books on useful subjects: that is to say, on
Medicine, Agriculture, and Magic.

So ancient China is to be seen now only as through a glass
darkly; if his great attempt had been quite successful, it would
not be to be seen at all. His crimes made no karma for China;
they are not a blot on her record;--since they were done by an
outside barbarian,--a mere publican and Ts'inner. From our
standpoint as students of history, he was a malefactor of the
first order; even when you take no account of his ruthless
cruelty to men;--and so China has considered him ever since. Yet
Karma finds ruthless agents for striking its horrible and
beneficial blows; (and woe unto them that it finds!). It seems
that Ts'in Shi Hwangti did draw the bowstring back--by this very
wickedness,--far back--that sent the arrow China tearing and
blazing out through the centuries to come. The fires in which
the books were burned were the pyre of the Phoenix,--the burning
of the astral molds,--the ignition and annihilation of the weight
and the karma of two millenniums. The Secular Bird was to burn
and be consumed to the last feather, and be turned to ashes
utterly, before she might spring up into the ether for her new
flight of ages.

One wonders what would happen if a Ts'in Shi Hwangti were to
arise and do by modern Christendom what this one did by ancient
China. I say nothing about the literati, but only about the
literature. Would burning it be altogether an evil? Nearly all
that is supremely worth keeping would live through; and its
value would be immensely enhanced. First the newspapers would
go, that sow lies broadcast, and the seeds of national hatreds.
The light literature would go, that stands between men and
thought. The books of theology would go, and the dust of
creedalism that lies so thick on men's minds. A thousand bad
precedents that keep us bound to medievalism would go with the
law-books: there would be a chance to pronounce, here and now as
human beings, on such things as capital punishment;--which
remains, though we do not recognise the fact, solely because it
has been in vogue all these centuries, and is a habit hard to
break with. History wo