The Confucian system, against which Sun Yat-sen reacted in part and in part sought to preserve, was a set of ideas and institutions developed as a reaction against certain conditions in ancient China. These conditions may be roughly described as having arisen from a system of proto-nationalisms, at a time when the old—perhaps prehistorically ancient—Chinese feudal system was rapidly declining and an early form of capitalism and of states was taking its place. The Chou dynasty (ca. 1150-221 B.C.) was in power at the time of this transition; under its rule the golden age of Chinese philosophy appeared—Confucius (552-479 B.C.) and Lao Tzŭ (ca. 570-ca. 490 B.C.) lived and taught. Their philosophies, contrary to the popular Western beliefs concerning Chinese philosophies, were protests against a world which seemed to them well-nigh intolerable. The old Chinese system, which may seem to Westerners a highly mystical feudal organization, was in its century-long death-agonies; the virtues it had taught were not the virtues of the hour; the loyalties it had set up were loyalties which could scarcely be maintained in a time when rising states, acting more and more as states have acted in the West, were disrupting the earlier organization of society, waging struggles—in the manner that, centuries later, Machiavelli was to portray—of intrigue and warfare for the eventual hegemony over that whole area of eastern Asia which the Chinese of that time regarded as the civilized world. The political aspects of the transition from the feudal to the proto-national system is described by one of the most eminent of the Western authorities on China in the following terms: “The aim of all the Leaders was to control western Ho-nan. There is the heart of ancient China.... All around about, in vaster regions occupied no doubt by less dense and more shifting populations, great States formed, increasing first towards the exterior, seeking (as we have seen in the case of China) to cut the communication of their rivals with the Barbarians, mutually forcing each other to change the directions of the expansion, exercising on each other a pressure from behind, and a converging pressure on the central overlordships. All schemed to conquer them. Thus an amalgamation was achieved. Whilst in the centre the Chinese nation was coming into being, on the outer borders States were being formed which, aiming at annexing the centre of China, ended by themselves also becoming Chinese.”(26) Not only did the newer, political organization of society begin to make itself distinct from the family, feudal, and religious organization; it began to engage in activities which increased its resemblance to the Western system of nations. Tributes of textiles, horses, and compulsory labor were demanded. A non-feudal economy was encouraged; the state of Ch’i encouraged artisans and merchants, and favored the trade in fish and salt. Mining, metallurgy and currency were studied.