In 484 Confucius was still in Wei, for in that year he is stated to have declined to discuss there a question connected with making war. In the year 484 or 483 the disciple sent by Confucius to Lu, as stated, in 492 conducted an expedition against Ts'i: this was the shameful period when orthodox Lu, in compulsory league with barbarous Wu, was playing a double and treacherous game under stress, and the question of recalling Confucius to save his native country was on the _tapis_. Hearing of this, and despite the heavy bribes offered him to stay by the ruler of Wei, Confucius started with alacrity for Lu, where he arrived safely after fourteen years of wandering. He is often stated to have visited over forty states in all; but it must be remembered that each of the important countries he visited had in turn a number of satellites of its own; as, for instance, the extremely ancient "marquess state" of Ki, or K'i, subordinate to Lu, which, though possessing great spiritual authority, had no weight in lay policy. An interesting point to notice is that Confucius' travels almost exactly coincide with those of the Second Protector 150 years earlier (see Chapter XXXIX); both of them ignored the Emperor, and both of them visited Ts'i, Ts'ao, Sung, and Cheng on their way to the Ts'u frontiers; but Confucius was not able to get much farther west so as to reach the Ts'u capital; nor was he able to get to Tsin; not to say the still more distant Ts'in. In other words, the limited centre of orthodox China remained for many centuries the same, and the vast regions surrounding it were still semi- barbarian in the fifth century B.C. Now it was that Confucius, seeing that the imperial power had diminished almost to nothing; that the Odes and Book, the Rites, and the Music no longer possessed their former influence; employed himself in making systematic search for documents, in re-editing the Book (of History), and in endeavouring to ascertain the exact ritual or administration of the preceding dynasties. "Henceforth the Rites could be understood and transmitted,"--from which we may assume that, up to this time, they had been practically a monopoly of the princely caste. He did not go further back into the mythical period than the two emperors who preceded the Hia dynasty, nor did he bring the Book farther down than to the time of Duke Muh of Ts'in, which practically means the time of the first Protectors. He really did for rites and history what he had blamed Tsz-ch'an for doing with the law: he popularized it. He also attempted with persistent study to master the Changes, to which incomprehensible work he added features of his own--very little more understandable than the original texts. As to the Odes, 3000 in number, he used the pruning knife much more vigorously, and nine-tenths of them were rejected as unsuitable for the purposes of good didactic lessons or conservative precedents. If we substitute, as we are