China was practically unknown to the outside world until the end of the seventeenth century, when its vast empire, explored in part by our missionaries, began to be revealed by them and appeared like a necropolis of all sciences in the past. The Chinese may be compared to a race of mummies; nothing progresses with them, for they live in the immobility of their traditions, from which the spirit and the life have long since withdrawn. They know nothing any longer, but they have a vague recollection of everything. The genius of China is the dragon of the Hesperides—which defends the golden apples in the garden of science. Their human type of divinity, instead of conquering the dragon, like Cadmus, cowers fascinated and magnetised by the monster who flashes before it a changing mirage of its scales. Mystery alone is alive in China, science is in a state of lethargy, or at least is in a deep sleep and speaks only in dream. We have said that the Chinese Tarot is based on the same Kabalistic and absolute data as the Hebrew _Sepher Yetzirah_; but China has also a hieroglyphical book consisting exclusively of combinations of two figures; this is the _Y-Kim_,[298] attributed to the emperor Fo-Hi, and M. de Maison, in his _Letters on China_, states that it is utterly indecipherable. Its difficulties however are not greater than those of the _Zohar_, of which it appears to be a curious complement and is indeed a valuable appendix thereto. The _Zohar_ explains the work of the Balance, or of universal equilibrium, and the _Y-Kim_ is the hieroglyphic and ciphered demonstration thereof. The key of the work is a pantacle known as the Trigrams of Fo-Hi. According to a legend related in the _Vay-Ky_, a collection of great authority in China, composed by Leon-Tao-Yuen, under the dynasty of the Soms, some seven or eight hundred years ago, the emperor Fo-Hi was meditating one day on the bank of a river about the great secrets of Nature, when he saw a sphinx come out of the water, meaning an allegorical animal, having the composite form of a horse and a dragon. Its head was elongated like that of a horse, it had four feet and ended in the tail of a serpent; the back was covered with scales, on each of which there shone the symbol of the mysterious Trigrams; they were smaller towards the extremities than those on the breast and back, but were in perfect harmony throughout. The dragon was reflected in the water but with all its characteristics inverted. This serpentine horse, the inspirer or rather the bearer of inspirations, like the Pegasus of Greek mythology, that symbol of universal light, or like the serpent of Kronos, initiated Fo-Hi into universal science. The Trigrams served as the introduction; he numbered the scales and combined the Trigrams in such a manner that he conceived a synthesis of the sciences compared and united with one another by the pre-existent and necessary harmonies of Nature. The tables of the _Y-Kim_ were the