The old Chinese society, made up of innumerable families, villages, and _hui_, comprised the whole "known world." Its strength was inexhaustible. Having no one nerve center, the world society could not be destroyed by the inroads of barbarians or the ravages of famine, pestilence, and insurrection. The Confucian ideology continued. At no one time were conditions so bad as to break the many threads of Chinese culture and to release a new generation from tradition. Throughout the centuries education and government continued side by side, even though dynasties fell and the country was overrun by conquerors. The absence of any rigid organization of legal authority facilitated survival, while a certain minimum of order could be maintained even in the absence of an emperor or, as more commonly occurred, in the presence of several. The governmental superstructure kept the Chinese world together in a formal manner; it did not give it vitality. The family, the village, and the _hui_ were fit subjects for imperial attention, but the emperor could not remove his sanction from their existence and thereby annihilate them. No precarious legal personality was attributed to the family, the village, and the _hui_, which could be extirpated by a mere edict. It was possible for the English kings to destroy the Highland clan of the MacGregor--"the proscribed name"--without liquidating the members of the clan _in toto_. In China the emperor could wipe out a family by massacre, but it was practically impossible for him to destroy an organization without destroying all its members. On the whole, however, the government of China pursued its three main ends--the maintenance of the ideology (education), the defense of the realm against barbarians (military affairs) and against adverse forces of nature (public works), and the collection of funds for the fulfilment of these functions (revenue). _Governmental Changes Foreshadowing the Republic_