The destruction of the books was a curious incident.  Shih Huang Ti, as appears from his calling himself “First Emperor,” disliked being reminded of the fact that China had existed before his time; therefore history was anathema to him.  Moreover the literati were already a strong force in the country, and were always (following Confucius) in favour of the preservation of ancient customs, whereas Shih Huang Ti was a vigorous innovator.  Moreover, he appears to have been uneducated and not of pure Chinese race.  Moved by the combined motives of vanity and radicalism, he issued an edict decreeing that—­

All official histories, except the memoirs of Tsin (his own family), shall be burned; except the persons who have the office of literati of the great learning, those who in the Empire permit themselves to hide the Shi-King, the Shu-King (Confucian classics), or the discourses of the hundred schools, must all go before the local civil and military authorities so that they may be burned.  Those who shall dare to discuss among themselves the Shi-King and the Shu-King shall be put to death and their corpses exposed in a public place; those who shall make use of antiquity to belittle modern times shall be put to death with their relations....  Thirty days after the publication of this edict, those who have not burned their books shall be branded and sent to forced labour.  The books which shall not be proscribed are those of medicine and pharmacy, of divination ..., of agriculture and of arboriculture.  As for those who desire to study the laws and ordinances, let them take the officials as masters. (Cordier, op. cit. i. p. 203.)

It will be seen that the First Emperor was something of a Bolshevik.  The Chinese literati, naturally, have blackened his memory.  On the other hand, modern Chinese reformers, who have experienced the opposition of old-fashioned scholars, have a certain sympathy with his attempt to destroy the innate conservatism of his subjects.  Thus Li Ung Bing[6] says:—­

No radical change can take place in China without encountering the opposition of the literati.  This was no less the case then than it is now.  To abolish feudalism by one stroke was a radical change indeed.  Whether the change was for the better or the worse, the men of letters took no time to inquire; whatever was good enough for their fathers was good enough for them and their children.  They found numerous authorities in the classics to support their contention and these they freely quoted to show that Shih Huang Ti was wrong.  They continued to criticize the government to such an extent that something had to be done to silence the voice of antiquity ...  As to how far this decree (on the burning of the books) was enforced, it is hard to say.  At any rate, it exempted all libraries of the government, or such as were in possession of a class of officials called Po Szu or Learned Men.  If any real damage was done