Confucius taught his people to obey their parents and teachers and to honor their ancestors. This sounds something like one of the Ten Commandments: “Honor thy father and thy mother.” Confucius also taught the golden rule, the same golden rule you are taught to-day, only instead of saying, “_Do_ unto others as you would be done by,” he said, “Do _not_ do to others what you would _not_ want others to do to you.” In China there are still as many people who follow the teachings of Confucius as there are Christians in all the rest of the world. So here are two religions each as large or larger than the Christian religion. China was highly civilized, even at this time, 500 B.C., and many inventions were known and used in that country long before the rest of the world ever heard of them. Yet we know little of China’s history until a great deal later. 21 Rich Man, Poor Man Whenever I pass a group of street boys playing ball, I almost always hear some one shout, “That’s no fair!” There always seem to be some players who think the others are not playing fair. Sides are always quarreling. They need an umpire. When Athens was young there were two sides among the people--the rich and the poor, the aristocrats and the common people--and they were always quarreling. Each side was trying to get more power, and each side said the other wasn’t playing fair. They needed an umpire. Athens had had kings, but the kings took the side of the rich, and so at last the Athenians had kicked out the last king, and after that they would have no more kings. About the year 600 B.C. things became so very bad that a man named Draco was chosen to make a set of rules for the Athenians to obey. These rules he made were called the Code of Draco. Draco’s Code made terrible punishments for any one who broke the rules. If a man stole anything, even as small a thing as a loaf of bread, he was not just fined or sent to jail; he was put to death! And no matter how small the wrong a man had done, he was put to death for it. Draco explained the reason for such a severe law by saying that a thief deserved to be put to death and should be. A man who killed another deserved _more_ than to be put to death, but unfortunately there was no worse punishment to give him. You can understand how much trouble the laws of Draco caused. They were so hard that a little later another man was called upon to make a new set of laws. This man was named Solon, and his laws were very just and good. We now call senators and other people who make our laws “Solons” after this man Solon who lived so long ago, even though their laws are not always just and good. Still the people were not satisfied with Solon’s laws. The upper classes thought the laws gave too much to the lower classes, and the lower classes thought they gave too much to the upper. Both classes, however, obeyed the laws for a while, although both classes complained against them.