This Chinese system of representing thought, cumbrous and inconvenient as
it is, is employed at the present time by one third of the human race.

Printing from blocks was practised in China as early as the sixth century
of our era, and printing from movable types as early as the tenth or
eleventh century, that is to say, about four hundred years before the same
art was invented in Europe.

CHINESE LITERATURE: CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS.--The most highly prized portion
of Chinese literature is embraced in what is known as the Five Classics
and the Four Books, called collectively the Nine Classics. The Five
Classics are among the oldest books in the world. For some of the books an
antiquity of 3000 years is claimed. The books embrace chronicles,
political and ethical maxims, and numerous odes. One of the most important
of the Classics is the so-called Book of Rites, said to date from 1200
B.C.

The Four Books are of later origin than the Five Classics, having been
written about the fifth and fourth centuries before the Christian era; yet
they hardly yield to them in sacredness in the eyes of the Chinese. The
first three of the series are by the pupils of the great sage and moralist
Confucius (551-478 B.C.), and the fourth is by Mencius (371-288 B.C.), a
disciple of Confucius, and a scarcely less revered philosopher and ethical
teacher. The teachings of the Four Books may be summed up in the simple
precept, "Walk in the Trodden Paths." Confucius was not a prophet, or
revealer; he laid no claims to a supernatural knowledge of God or of the
hereafter; he said nothing of an Infinite Spirit, and but little of a
future life. His cardinal precepts were obedience to superiors, reverence
for the ancients, and imitation of their virtues. He himself walked in the