body; the yang was the life principle and the personality. The aim of Chinese philosophy was to reconcile the two. Confucius was born near Shantung at a time of great warfare but also of great social change, and he was shaped by both processes. Cities were growing in size (up to 100,000 inhabitants, according to some sources), coinage had been introduced, and commercial progress was so marked that certain areas were already well known for particular products (silk and lacquer in Shantung, iron mining in Szechuan). Most particular to China was the class known as shih (inflected differently from the shih , priest-scribes, mentioned above): these were families of noble descent who had slipped down the social scale and become commoners. They were not merchants but scholars, educated but dispossessed of their former cachet. Confucius was of this class. Bright enough to be educated at a school for the aristocracy, his first job was as a clerk in the state granaries. He was married at nineteen but little is known about his wife and family.128 He was greatly influenced by Zi Zhaan, the prime minister of Cheng, who died in 522 BC, when Confucius was twenty-nine. Zi Zhaan introduced the first law code in China, the text for which he ordered to be inscribed on bronzes and displayed publicly, so that all would know what rules they were expected to obey.129 A final influence on Confucius was the prevalent scepticism which the Chinese then felt towards religion. There had been so much war that no one any longer believed in the power of the gods to aid kings, with the result that many temples-historically the most prominent buildings in the cities-had been destroyed. The fact that prayer and sacrifice had failed so dismally created circumstances for a rise in rationalism, of which Confucius was the finest fruit. He and his most important followers, Motzu ( c . 480-390 BC) and Mengtzu (Mencius, 372-289 BC), were members of an important group of thinkers, the so-called 'hundred schools' (= a great many). Confucius' learning gradually established him a reputation, and he was given a government job, along with several of his students. But he resigned, and journeyed on the road for ten years, after which he set up a school-the first in Chinese history-taking students from all classes of society, and where he could begin to broadcast his ideas more effectively. His main concern was an ethical life, facing the problem of how men can live together. This reflected China's transition to an urban society. Like the Buddha, like Plato and like Aristotle, he looked beyond the gods, and taught that the answer to an ethical life lies within man himself, that universal order and harmony can only be achieved if people show a wider sense of community and obligation than their own and their family's self-interest.130 He thought that scholarship and learning were the surest way to harmony and order and that the natural aristocrats in the sort of society he wanted were the sages. There were three key elements in his thought. The first was tao , The Way. He never defined this too closely-like Plato he believed that intuition served a role here. But the Chinese character tao originally meant a path or a road, the way to a destination. Confucius meant to emphasise that there is a path which one ought to follow in life, to produce wisdom, harmony and 'right conduct'. He implied that we intuitively know what this is, but often, for narrow, selfish reasons, pretend we don't. The second concept was jen . This is a form of goodness (again, echoes of Plato's ideal forms), the highest perfection normally only achieved by mythical heroes. Confucius believed that an individual's nature was pre-ordained by heaven (a word he used widely in place of an anthropomorphised god) but, importantly, he thought that man can work on his nature, to improve himself: he can cultivate morality, hard work, love towards others, the continued efforttobegood.131 One should be (as the Buddha also said) gentle, polite, considerate always, in conformity with li , the mores of polite society. This inner harmony of mind, he thought, could be helped by the study of music. The third concept was I , righteousness or justice. Again, Confucius was wary of defining this idea too closely, but he affirmed that men can learn to recognise justice from everyday experience (as Plato said we can learn to recognise Beauty and Goodness), and that this should always be their guide. The Taoist religion is in many ways the opposite of Confucianism, though it still shares many similarities with Aristotle and the Buddha. Some believe that the founder of Taoism, Laotzu, was an older contemporary of Confucius. Others contend that he never existed: the words lao tzu mean 'old man' and, say the doubters, the Lao tzu , the book-the most-frequently translated work in Chinese-is an anthology