it necessary to make a revision taking into
deeper consideration the existence of tetrarchies and heptarchies in
which a number of kings and subrulers reigned simultaneously.

138 To assist these four principal secretaries are two
under-secretaries, one Manchu and one Chinese, and a board of ten
assistants. Together, these sixteen secretaries divided between two
races, constitute a grand secretariat, which acts as nearly as
possible as the cabinet of the Emperor. (Missions in China. Jas. S.
Dennis, D.D.)

139 This association of Tenos with seven-fold division is particularly
suggestive because, in Pythagorean philosophy, the number seven was
named Parthenos, Athene, also Apollo, Hermes, Hephaistos, Heracles,
Dionysius, Rex, etc. These divinities, the second and third of which
are specially known as patrons of cities, appear in a new light when
it is realized that they were personifications of the number seven
and, by extension, of the seven-fold cosmos, state and city. On p.
449, Plato's division of the Cosmos is cited. Reference to the
history of Greek philosophy shows, however that the spurious
existence of four or five elements had not always been accepted in
Greece, that Thales (640-550 B.C.) had laid down the doctrine of a
single eternal, original element, water or fluid substance, and
"assimilated the universe to an organized body or system."
Xenophanes (570-480 B.C.) conceived "nature as one unchangeable and
indivisible whole, spherical, animated ... penetrated by or indeed
identical with God." It is usually accepted that it was Empedocles
(444 B.C.) who first formulated the elements, earth, air, fire and
water, to which later philosophers added a fifth, the all-embracing
aether.

In a luminous monograph (Pythagoras und die Inder, Leipzig, 1884.),
Professor L. von Schroeder, of Dorpat, Russia, quoting the authority
of Professor Max Mueller, Edward Zeller and Oldenburg, has
conclusively shown that the five elements, earth, fire, water, air
and aether (Sanskrit akaca) already occur in the Brahmanas; were
taught in the Samkhya philosophy of the Kapila and were therefore
known in India at least as far back as in the seventh century B.C.
The idea of the five elements is so familiar to the Hindus at the
present