66 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY. 



justify his assumption of the title of " Emperor First," and 

 the consignment to oblivion of all annals which could pre- 

 serve traditions of any earlier reigns. Therefore he con- 

 structed, metaphorically speaking, another wall which has 

 been even a more effectual barrier to historical research 

 than was the great pile of masonry to the incursions of the 

 northern barbarians that is to say, he burned every book 

 he could find excepting those treating on agriculture and 

 medicine; and lest their contents should be remembered 

 or reproachful comment should be made upon his act, he 

 buried alive five hundred of the most learned scholars. 

 The intention was to completely blot out every trace of 

 preceding emperors. Some thirty years later, when 

 Wan-te, of the Han dynasty (B. C. 178), wished to revive 

 literature, even so venerated a classic as the Shoo-king 

 could not be found; so that it was re-constructed from 

 memory by one Fuh-sang, then ninety years of age, who 

 in the reign of the Emperor First, being one of the princi- 

 pal literati, had put out his own eyes and feigned idiocy in 

 order to escape death. A few years later it was claimed 

 that a number of books had been found in pulling down a 

 former abode of Confucius, and on this alleged discovery 

 some of the existing Chinese classics are based. 1 At the 

 present time, if the latter were destroyed, scores of Chinese 

 scholars could undoubtedly be found capable of reproduc- 

 ing them verbatim from memory; but the fact that the 

 version of the Shoo-king repeated by Fuh-sang was con- 

 sidered far inferior to that of the supposed old book, dis- 

 covered as before mentioned, seems to indicate that the 

 extraordinary education, which the Middle Kingdom now 

 requires of its people as a condition precedent to social 

 and official honors, did not, in those ancient days, reach its 

 present degree of minute thoroughness. 



While the beginning of Chinese history is placed by De 

 Lacouperie at the 23d century B. C., other Chinese annal- 



The Shoo-king, or the Historical Classic. Trans, by Medhurst. 

 Shanghae, 1846. 



