About the year 3000 B.C., the Emperor Hoang-ti is said to have invented the decimal system and the measurement of time, and also to have completed the organization of the Empire. If this date is to be relied upon, the organization of the Chinese State was taking shape about eight centuries after the time of the great Sargon of Agadê, who brought to its highest power the earlier Chaldean empire. The national ballads or folk-songs, later collected under the title of the _Book of Odes_, are believed by Legge to antedate the Empire--that is, to have come into circulation while the territory was still separated into a number of independent states or principalities. These folk-songs were collected by the minstrels and historiographers working under the direction of the feudatory princes, and the complete collection, when reshaped by Confucius, is said to have comprised as many as three thousand songs. The writer of the article on China in the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ (9th edition) speaks of the collection as probably antedating any other known work of literature. The folk-songs themselves certainly existed from a very early date, but, according to Karpeles, the collection did not take the form of a book until after 1000 B.C. Karpeles believes that the earliest known work in Chinese literature is the _Y-king_, the _Book of the Metamorphoses_, or of _Developments_, which dates from 1150 B.C., about two centuries earlier than the generally accepted date of the Homeric poems. The author, Wang-wang, having been put into prison for some political offence, employed his enforced leisure in working out a philosophical system based upon the maxims of the Emperor Fu-hi.[5] The _Book of the Developments_ continued in high honor for many centuries, and early in the fifth century B.C. was reissued by Confucius, with an elaborate analysis and commentary, serving to make its teachings available for later generations. He also issued a “final edition” of the _Book of Songs_, which comprised, out of the three thousand of the old collection, the three hundred which were best worth preservation. Confucius takes rank in China as practically the founder of its literature, of its system of morals, and of its religious ideal or standard. The name Confucius is the Latinized form of Kung Fu-tsze--Kung, the teacher or master. He was free, says one of his disciples, from four things: foregone conclusions, arbitrary determinations, obstinacy, and egoism. A good American of the present time may express the regret that Confucius, or some disciples like him, had not been spared to occupy seats in the Senate Chamber at Washington. What is known as the religion of Confucius, comprises in substance the old-time national or popular faith freshly interpreted into the thought and language of the later generation, and shaped into a practical system of morals as a guide for the action of the state and for the daily life of the individual citizen.