The result of the three centuries that had passed was a symbiosis between the urban aristocrats and the country-people.  The rulers of the towns took over from the general population almost the whole vocabulary of the language which from now on we may call “Chinese”.  They naturally took over elements of the material civilization.  The subjugated population had, meanwhile, to adjust itself to its lords.  In the organism that thus developed, with its unified economic system, the conquerors became an aristocratic ruling class, and the subjugated population became a lower class, with varied elements but mainly a peasantry.  From now on we may call this society “Chinese”; it has endured to the middle of the twentieth century.  Most later essential societal changes are the result of internal development and not of aggression from without.

4 Limitation of the imperial power

In 771 B.C. an alliance of northern feudal states had attacked the ruler in his western capital; in a battle close to the city they had overcome and killed him.  This campaign appears to have set in motion considerable groups from various tribes, so that almost the whole province of Shensi was lost.  With the aid of some feudal lords who had remained loyal, a Chou prince was rescued and conducted eastward to the second capital, Loyang, which until then had never been the ruler’s actual place of residence.  In this rescue a lesser feudal prince, ruler of the feudal state of Ch’in, specially distinguished himself.  Soon afterwards this prince, whose domain had lain close to that of the ruler, reconquered a great part of the lost territory, and thereafter regarded it as his own fief.  The Ch’in family resided in the same capital in which the Chou had lived in the past, and five hundred years later we shall meet with them again as the dynasty that succeeded the Chou.

The new ruler, resident now in Loyang, was foredoomed to impotence.  He was now in the centre of the country, and less exposed to large-scale enemy attacks; but his actual rule extended little beyond the town itself and its immediate environment.  Moreover, attacks did not entirely cease; several times parts of the indigenous population living between the Chou towns rose against the towns, even in the centre of the country.

Now that the emperor had no territory that could be the basis of a strong rule and, moreover, because he owed his position to the feudal lords and was thus under an obligation to them, he ruled no longer as the chief of the feudal lords but as a sort of sanctified overlord; and this was the position of all his successors.  A situation was formed at first that may be compared with that of Japan down to the middle of the nineteenth century.  The ruler was a symbol rather than an exerciser of power.  There had to be a supreme ruler because, in the worship of Heaven which was recognized by all the feudal lords, the supreme sacrifices could only be offered by the Son of Heaven in person.