the satrap.

To a people of this character, whose conceptions of political
society went no farther than personal obedience to a chief, a conqueror
like Cyrus would communicate the strongest excitement and enthusiasm
of which they were capable. He had found them slaves, and made them
masters: he was the first and greatest of national benefactors, as well
as the most forward of leaders in the field: they followed him from
one conquest to another, during the thirty years of his reign, their
love of empire growing with the empire itself. And this impulse of
aggrandizement continued unabated during the reigns of his three next
successors--Cambyses, Darius, and Xerxes--until it was at length
violently stifled by the humiliating defeats of Plataea and Salamis;
after which the Persians became content with defending themselves at
home and playing a secondary game.

RISE OF CONFUCIUS, THE CHINESE SAGE

B.C. 550

R.K. DOUGLAS

Confucius is the Latinized name of Kung Futusze, or "Master Kung,"
whose work in China did much to educate the people in social and
civic virtues. He began as a political reformer at a time when the
empire was cut up into a number of petty and discordant
principalities. As a practical statesman and administrator, he
urged the necessity of reform upon the princes whom one after
another he served. His advice was invariably disregarded, and as he
said "no intelligent ruler arose in his time." His great maxims of
submission to the emperor or supreme head of the state he based on
the analogous duty of filial obedience in a household, and his very
spirit of piety prevented him from taking independent measures for
redressing the evils and oppressions of his distracted country.

His moral teachings are not based on any specific religious
foundation, but they have become the settled code of Chinese life,
of which submissiveness to authority, industry, frugality, and fair
dealing as prescribed by Confucian ethics are general
characteristics. The political doctrines of this great reformer
were eventually adopted, and his teaching and example brought about
a peaceful and gradual, but complete revolution, in the Chinese
Empire, whose consolidation into a simple kingdom was the practical
result of this sage's influence.

At the time of which we write the Chinese were still clinging to the
banks of