nomad tribes seem this time to have been Proto-Mongols; they made a direct attack on the garrison town and actually conquered it.  The remnant of the urban population, no more than 730 in number, had to flee southward.  It is clear from this incident that nomads were still living in the middle of China, within the territory of the feudal states, and that they were still decidedly strong, though no longer in a position to get rid entirely of the feudal lords of the Chou.

The period of the dictators came to an end after about a century, because it was found that none of the feudal states was any longer strong enough to exercise control over all the others.  These others formed alliances against which the dictator was powerless.  Thus this period passed into the next, which the Chinese call the period of the Contending States.

6 Confucius

After this survey of the political history we must consider the intellectual history of this period, for between 550 and 280 B.C. the enduring fundamental influences in the Chinese social order and in the whole intellectual life of China had their original.  We saw how the priests of the earlier dynasty of the Shang developed into the group of so-called “scholars”.  When the Chou ruler, after the move to the second capital, had lost virtually all but his religious authority, these “scholars” gained increased influence.  They were the specialists in traditional morals, in sacrifices, and in the organization of festivals.  The continually increasing ritualism at the court of the Chou called for more and more of these men.  The various feudal lords also attracted these scholars to their side, employed them as tutors for their children, and entrusted them with the conduct of sacrifices and festivals.

China’s best-known philosopher, Confucius (Chinese:  K’ung Tzu), was one of these scholars.  He was born in 551 B.C. in the feudal state Lu in the present province of Shantung.  In Lu and its neighbouring state Sung, institutions of the Shang had remained strong; both states regarded themselves as legitimate heirs of Shang culture, and many traces of Shang culture can be seen in Confucius’s political and ethical ideas.  He acquired the knowledge which a scholar had to possess, and then taught in the families of nobles, also helping in the administration of their properties.  He made several attempts to obtain advancement, either in vain or with only a short term of employment ending in dismissal.  Thus his career was a continuing pilgrimage from one noble to another, from one feudal lord to another, accompanied by a few young men, sons of scholars, who were partly his pupils and partly his servants.  Many of these disciples seem to have been “illegitimate” sons of noblemen, i.e. sons of concubines, and Confucius’s own family seems to have been of the same origin.  In the strongly patriarchal and patrilinear system of the Chou and the developing primogeniture, children of secondary wives had a lower social status.  Ultimately Confucius gave up his wanderings, settled in his home town of Lu, and there taught his disciples until his death in 479 B.C.