The successor of Shun-Che, his son Kang-Hi, who was only eight years old when he came to the throne, showed special aptitude for astronomy, and was never tired of listening to the instructions of Father Verbiest. As he grew older he worked with him and the other missionaries at geometry and the kindred sciences, gaining year by year in scientific knowledge. It was during his reign that the Jesuit missionaries, Bouvet, Regis, Fartoux, Fridelli, Cardoso, and others, made their celebrated survey of the whole of China on trigometrical principles, which is still looked upon as absolutely correct by geographers, and there is little doubt that had the gifted young Emperor been left entirely under the guidance of these enlightened fathers, they would, through the door opened by science, have introduced Christianity, or rather their form of Christianity, throughout the entire Empire. During the minority of Kang-Hi, however, the four ministers appointed to govern the country did all in their power to counteract the influence of the foreigners, and restore all the old-established customs. Their efforts were aided by the fact that monks belonging to other orders had now established themselves here and there in the country, and between them and the Jesuits a bitter feud was waged as to the way in which Christian worship should be performed, and the meaning of certain Chinese words. To give but one or two instances of the puerile nature of the quarrel which jeopardized the cause that should have been sacred to all the disputants, one side claimed that the word _Chang-ti_ signified the material heaven, the other that it referred to the God inhabiting heaven; one side considered the honour shown to ancestors and the reverence in which the doctrines of Confucius are held to be religious duties, whilst the other looked upon them as mere civil or political customs. That it was of little consequence which was right was patent to any but the most prejudiced observer, yet the foolish monks referred their differences for arbitration to the Pope and the Emperor. The former decided in favour of the Dominicans, the latter in that of the Jesuits, and the Chinese literati not unreasonably asked how the missionaries could expect to be listened to by the natives if they could not agree amongst themselves.