manuscripts from pre-Ch'in times still contain a high percentage of
Chinese characters which we cannot read because they were local
characters; but all words in texts after the Ch'in time can be read
because they belong to the standardized script. We know now that all
classical texts of pre-Ch'in time as we have them today, have been
re-written in this standardized script in the second century B.C.: we do
not know which words they actually contained at the time when they were
composed, nor how these words were actually pronounced, a fact which
makes the reconstruction of Chinese language before Ch'in very
difficult.

The next requirement for the carrying on of the administration was the
unification of weights and measures and, a surprising thing to us, of
the gauge of the tracks for wagons. In the various feudal states there
had been different weights and measures in use, and this had led to
great difficulties in the centralization of the collection of taxes. The
centre of administration, that is to say the new capital of Ch'in, had
grown through the transfer of nobles and through the enormous size of
the administrative staff into a thickly populated city with very large
requirements of food. The fields of the former state of Ch'in alone
could not feed the city; and the grain supplied in payment of taxation
had to be brought in from far around, partly by cart. The only roads
then existing consisted of deep cart-tracks. If the axles were not of
the same length for all carts, the roads were simply unusable for many
of them. Accordingly a fixed length was laid down for axles. The
advocates of all these reforms were also their beneficiaries, the
merchants.

The first principle of the Legalist school, a principle which had been
applied in Ch'in and which was to be extended to the whole realm, was