The egocentric hedonist Yang Chu, a colorful if vague figure, was a direct opposite of Mo-tzu. Being a hedonist and a social parasite, Yang Chu asserted the priority of sensual pleasures and maintained that the only important thing was to spend the years granted you in comfort, because nothing but death awaits you beyond — the bones rotting in the dust that make the great and the humble equal. The actual role of Yang Chu's ideas is not quite clear. However, Meng-tzu — who decidedly condemned both Mo-tzu and Yang Chu — put them side by side, judging that their preposterous ideas were more or less equally harmful to the people.
A much more important part in the history of Ancient Chinese thought and in actual events was played by the followers of the fa school, the Legists. They had several factions and were successfully received among the ruling class. Shen Pu-hai (400–337 B.C.), a minister at the court of Han kingdom, held the art of masterful government supreme. He maintained that the ruler of the state should pick his words with care, avoid haste in his actions and control his feelings. In ruling the state he must rely on his numerous and carefully selected assistants, none of whom he nonetheless should trust completely. The ruler is the hub and the assistants, the spokes. The ruler must not demonstrate his wisdom needlessly. Besides, he must rule by exercising the wu-wei ("non-doing") principle; i.e., he must see, hear and know everything, but organize his government so as to allow events take the desired course naturally, giving them only the occasional corrective nudge. For all that, daily strict supervision and intelligent selection of personnel are an absolute necessity. Many of Shen Pu-hai's suggestions were subsequently taken into account. Suffice it to remind the reader about the competition system used at culling qualified officials. However, it was the rigid Legism of Yang of Wei, or Shang Yang (390–338 B.C.), that played a far greater part in the history of Ancient China and Chinese civilization as a whole.
Shang Yang was a relative of the ruler of the Wei kingdom; he came to Ch'in at the request of Ch'in's ruler Hsiao Kung, who dreamed of reforming and radically strengthening his vast, though sparsely populated and semi-barbarian state. The essence of Shang Yang's reform — which was decently expressed in his treatise and even better demonstrated in the course of the radical changes he started (they were described in the historical work of Ssu-ma Ch'ien) — is that the people ought to be ruled with a rod of iron. Initially, the reform involved only double taxation exacted from families having more than one grown man in order to force such families to move and settle uncultivated lands. Then the Ch'in authorities published the law that invited immigrants from different, overpopulated states of Chungkuo (the "Middle Kingdoms") to Ch'in, providing fairly favorable condition for them. Generally speaking, laws — i.e., orders given by the authorities — were to become the main tool of ruling the people. Failure to obey laws (it was officials' duty to circulate their main idea among the people) entailed punishment. Shang Yang prescribed severe punishments even for trifling offences so as to discourage people from transgressing seriously, with a view to eliminating grave crimes in Ch'in. Conduct of the people must be strictly controlled and its efforts must be channeled into "productive occupations", i.e., farming and soldiering. The pao-chia system that incorporated small groups of five and ten families, each headed by a responsible appointee, involved the practice of mutual help — and also of mutual spying. Everyone was responsible for everyone else. Warriors were rewarded for military exploits. Reward found expression primarily in the system of socio-administrative ranks (there were normally 18 to 20 of them) created by Shang Yang and currently well-known all over the world. The lower ranks of that system were assigned among villagers. You were born, married, procreated a child, became the head of a large family, the patriarch of a group of kindred families, you were elected or appointed the head of a pao-chia or a community — all these phases of your life correspond to ranks 1–8 of the system. Higher ranks were assigned bureaucrats and soldiers for their service and special merits. Ranks higher than the 8th one normally entailed a position with a good wage, while the holders of the top ranks were often granted, as part of their office, the privilege to live at the expense of local population.
Shang Yang, who for his great services was granted one of the very top ranks and a landed estate with a right to use revenues for his personal needs, could not abide "parasites". He filed under that heading the scholars of rival schools (mostly Confucians) and, first and foremost, the nouveaux riches (though he had no love for the old aristocrats either, stripping them of rewards and honors whenever they failed to exhibit military valor). The owner of private property is, by his very nature, an enemy of the state, since that which was once received — and which must be received — by the state goes to his pocket. Shang Yang suggested that all the rich must buy ranks for large sums of money, and no one refused such offers. Thus the buyer was losing his wealth, but obtained prestige, which was highly prized in the rank-divided society. Shang Yang strictly controlled the government apparatus and encouraged mutual spying and informing within it. Unlike Confucians, he was not of the opinion that the state machinery needed the intelligent and the capable. It really needed the mediocre, the assiduous, the law-abiding. According to Shang Yang, the people at large were just cattle — a view he never concealed. The basically true slogan, "The weaker the people, the stronger the state," was his favorite dictum. Shang Yang was extremely cynical, but to give him his due he worked expertly. Having taken the iron rod of power in his hands, he used it unceasingly, treating the people as submissive cattle, he proved capable of quickly transforming the backward state of Ch'in into a developed, well-ordered and wealthy kingdom whose military power was perhaps unrivaled in the Under-Heaven.
Philosophy of Taoism was one of the most intriguing trends in Ancient Chinese thought. It is important to keep in mind that, up to the late 4th and early 3rd centuries, China was not familiar with mythology, heroic epos, mysticism and metaphysics proper to religious doctrine, especially in the sphere of cos-mogonic constructs. As pointed out in Volumes I and II of this three-volume publication, all the main ideologemes, ceremonial rites and reforms were equally aimed at the same goal of creating in the Under-Heaven favorable conditions for achieving purely earthly, if sometimes very diverse, objectives. However, since the above-indicated point in time, many things begin to change. The Tso-chuan, a commentary on the Ch 'unch Чи chronicle, mentions the six primary elements, liu-fu (earth, water, fire, metal, wood, grain). In the Old Iranian Avesta, in the section dealing with Zoroaster's (fl. no later than the 7th century B.C.) reforms, we find a nearly identical group of six elements: earth, water, fire, metal, wood, cattle. In the semi-nomadic Iranian society, cattle was a really important substance, whereas in the Chou China it was practically absent. There are grounds to suspect that in the commentary in question cattle was replaced with grain; subsequently, the commentator reasoned logically that wood and grain represented a single substance and these two elements became supplanted with one — plants. Thus the Ancient Chinese thought acquired the notion of wu-hsing, the five proto-elements (the first five elements of the Iranian and Chou lists). The fact that these groups of five elements are completely identical is not accidental. Furthermore, this likeness goes much deeper, beyond the obvious. Zoroastrian dualism was based on the opposition of the forces of Good and Light to those of Evil and Darkness. The Tso-chuan also refers to yin and yang, and Ancient Chinese dictionaries clearly define them, respectively, as the northern, dark and the southern, bright sides of a mountain, not as metaphysical notions.