e Legalists recognized, therefore, only the ruler and next to
him, as the really active and responsible man, the chancellor; under
these there were to be only the common people, consisting of the richer
and poorer peasants; the people's duty was to live and work for the
ruler, and to carry out without question whatever orders they received.
They were not to discuss or think, but to obey. The chancellor was to
draft laws which came automatically into operation. The ruler himself
was to have nothing to do with the government or with the application of
the laws. He was only a symbol, a representative of the equally inactive
Heaven. Clearly these theories were much the best suited to the
conditions of the break-up of feudalism about 300 B.C. Thus they were
first adopted by the state in which the old idea of the feudal state had
been least developed, the state of Ch'in, in which alien peoples were
most strongly represented. Shang Yang became the actual organizer of the
state of Ch'in. His ideas were further developed by Han Fei Tz[)u] (died
233 B.C.). The mentality which speaks out of his writings has closest
similarity to the famous Indian Arthashastra which originated slightly
earlier; both books exhibit a "Machiavellian" spirit. It must be
observed that these theories had little or nothing to do with the ideas
of the old cult of Heaven or with family allegiance; on the other hand,
the soldierly element, with the notion of obedience, was well suited to
the militarized peoples of the west. The population of Ch'in, organized
throughout on these principles, was then in a position to remove one
opponent after another. In the middle of the third century B.C. the
greater part of the China of that time was already in the hands of
Ch'in, and in 256 B.C. the last emperor of the Chou dynasty was
compelled, in his complete impotence, to abdicate in favour of the ruler
of Ch'in.

Apart from these more or less political speculations, there came into
existence in this period, by no mere chance, a school of thought which
never succeeded in fully developing in China, concerned with natural
science and comparable with the Greek natural philosophy. We have
already several times pointed to parallels between Chinese and Indian
thoughts. Such similarities may be the result of mere coincidence. But
recent findings in Central Asia indicate that direct connections between
India, Persia, and China may have started at a time much earlier than we
ha