It was in this mood that I set out for China to seek a new hope.
CHAPTER II
CHINA BEFORE THE NINETEENTH CENTURY
Where the Chinese came from is a matter of conjecture. Their early
history is known only from their own annals, which throw no light upon
the question. The Shu-King, one of the Confucian classics (edited, not
composed, by Confucius), begins, like Livy, with legendary accounts of
princes whose virtues and vices are intended to supply edification or
warning to subsequent rulers. Yao and Shun were two model Emperors,
whose date (if any) was somewhere in the third millennium B.C. "The age
of Yao and Shun," in Chinese literature, means what "the Golden Age"
mean with us. It seems certain that, when Chinese history begins, the
Chinese occupied only a small part of what is now China, along the banks
of the Yellow River. They were agricultural, and had already reached a
fairly high level of civilization--much higher than that of any other
part of Eastern Asia. The Yellow River is a fierce and terrible stream,
too swift for navigation, turgid, and full of mud, depositing silt upon
its bed until it rises above the surrounding country, when it suddenly
alters its course, sweeping away villages and towns in a destructive
torrent. Among most early agricultural nations, such a river would have
inspired superstitious awe, and floods would have been averted by human
sacrifice; in the Shu-King, however, there is little trace of
superstition.
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