This Chinese system of representing thought, cumbrous and inconvenient as it is, is employed at the present time by one third of the human race. Printing from blocks was practised in China as early as the sixth century of our era, and printing from movable types as early as the tenth or eleventh century, that is to say, about four hundred years before the same art was invented in Europe. CHINESE LITERATURE: CONFUCIUS AND MENCIUS.--The most highly prized portion of Chinese literature is embraced in what is known as the Five Classics and the Four Books, called collectively the Nine Classics. The Five Classics are among the oldest books in the world. For some of the books an antiquity of 3000 years is claimed. The books embrace chronicles, political and ethical maxims, and numerous odes. One of the most important of the Classics is the so-called Book of Rites, said to date from 1200 B.C. The Four Books are of later origin than the Five Classics, having been written about the fifth and fourth centuries before the Christian era; yet they hardly yield to them in sacredness in the eyes of the Chinese. The first three of the series are by the pupils of the great sage and moralist Confucius (551-478 B.C.), and the fourth is by Mencius (371-288 B.C.), a disciple of Confucius, and a scarcely less revered philosopher and ethical teacher. The teachings of the Four Books may be summed up in the simple precept, "Walk in the Trodden Paths." Confucius was not a prophet, or revealer; he laid no claims to a supernatural knowledge of God or of the hereafter; he said nothing of an Infinite Spirit, and but little of a future life. His cardinal precepts were obedience to superiors, reverence for the ancients, and imitation of their virtues. He himself walked in the old paths, and thus added the force of example to that of precept. He gave the Chinese the Golden Rule, stated negatively: "What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others." During the reign of Che Hwang-te (see p. 13), Chinese literature suffered a great disaster. That despot, for the reason that the teachers in their opposition to him were constantly quoting the ancient writings against his innovations, ordered the chief historical books to be destroyed, and sentenced to death any one who should presume to talk about the proscribed writings, or even allude to the virtues of the ancients in such a way as to reflect upon his reforms. The contumacious he sent to work upon the Great Wall. But the people concealed the books in the walls of their houses, or better still hid them away in their memories; and in this way the priceless inheritance of antiquity was preserved until the storm had passed.