By common consent it is acknowledged that the 'Yi King,' Book of Changes, is the oldest work extant in Chinese literature; though other works, the names of which only have come down to us, were contemporaneously current in the country. A peculiar veneration is naturally felt by the Chinese for this sole surviving waif from a past literature; and from the time of Confucius downward, scholars of every age have attempted to explain its mystic pages. The basis of the work is popularly believed to be eight diagrams, which are said to have been designed by Fuh-hi (B.C. 2852), and which by subdivision have become multiplied into sixty-four. One of these stands at the head of each of the sixty-four chapters into which the work is now divided. Following these diagrams is in each case an initial character, with short phrases which have been held by Confucius and every subsequent native commentator to explain the meaning of the diagrams. But the key to the puzzle was denied to these scholars, who made confusion worse confounded by their attempts to make sense of that which was unintelligible to them. So mysterious a text was naturally believed to be a work on divination; and accepting this cue, the commentators devoted their energies to forcing into the Procrustean bed of divination the disjointed phrases which follow the diagrams. The solution of the mystery, which had escaped the keen study of five-and-twenty centuries of native scholars, was discovered by the late Professor Terrieu de la Couperie, who by many irrefragable proofs demonstrated that the 'Yi King' consists "of old fragments of early times in China, mostly of a lexical character." With this explanation the futility of the attempts of the native scholars to translate it as a connected text at once becomes apparent. A large proportion of the chapters are merely syllabaries, similar to those of Chaldea. The initial character represents the word to be explained, and the phrases following express its various meanings. An excellent translation of the 'Yi King' as it is understood by native scholars was published by Professor Legge in 'The Sacred Books of the East' (1882); and a comparison of his translation of the seventh chapter with Professor T. de la Couperie's rendering of the same passage must be enough to convince the most skeptical that even if he is not absolutely correct, the native scholars must undoubtedly be wrong. The chapter is headed by a diagram consisting of five divided lines and one undivided; and the initial character is Sze, which is described in modern dictionaries as meaning "a teacher," "instructor," "model," "an army," "a poet," "a multitude," "the people," "all," "laws," "an elder." Of the phrases which follow, Professor Legge gives the following rendering:-- "Sze indicates how, in the case which it supposes, with firmness and correctness, and [a leader of] age and experience, there will be good fortune and no error.