able to talk convincingly, so as to defeat a rival in a duel of words on
logical grounds.

Unquestionably, however, the most important school of this period was
that of the so-called Legalists, whose most famous representative was
Shang Yang (or Shang Tz[)u], died 338 B.C.). The supporters of this
school came principally from old princely families that had lost their
feudal possessions, and not from among the so-called scholars. They were
people belonging to the upper class who possessed political experience
and now offered their knowledge to other princes who still reigned.
These men had entirely given up the old conservative traditions of
Confucianism; they were the first to make their peace with the new
social order. They recognized that little or nothing remained of the old
upper class of feudal lords and their following. The last of the feudal
lords collected around the heads of the last remaining princely courts,
or lived quietly on the estates that still remained to them. Such a
class, with its moral and economic strength broken, could no longer
lead. The 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