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.  Yao and Shun, and Yue (the latter’s successor), were all occupied in combating the inundations, but their methods were those of the engineer, not of the miracle-worker.  This shows, at least, the state of belief in the time of Confucius.  The character ascribed to Yao shows what was expected of an Emperor:—­

He was reverential, intelligent, accomplished, and thoughtful—­naturally and without effort.  He was sincerely courteous, and capable of all complaisance.  The display of these qualities reached to the four extremities of the empire, and extended from earth to heaven.  He was able to make the able and virtuous distinguished, and thence proceeded to the love of the nine classes of his kindred, who all became harmonious.  He also regulated and polished the people of his domain, who all became brightly intelligent.  Finally, he united and harmonized the myriad States of the empire; and lo! the black-haired people were transformed.  The result was universal concord.[1]

The first date which can be assigned with precision in Chinese history is that of an eclipse of the sun in 776 B.C.[2] There is no reason to doubt the general correctness of the records for considerably earlier times, but their exact chronology cannot be fixed.  At this period, the Chou dynasty, which fell in 249 B.C. and is supposed to have begun in 1122 B.C., was already declining in power as compared with a number of nominally subordinate feudal States.  The position of the Emperor at this time, and for the next 500 years, was similar to that of the King of France during those parts of the Middle Ages when his authority was