Man and His Migrations

by R. G. Latham

At some period anterior to 550 B.C., the first monarch with whom the improvement of China began, and whose name was Yao, ruled over a small portion of the present empire, viz. its north-west district; and the first nations that he fought against were the Yen and Tsi, in Pe-tche-li and Shantong respectively.

Later still, Honan was conquered.

B.C. 550. All to the south of the Ta-keang was barbarous; and the title of King of Chinese was only Vang or prince, not Hoang-te or Emperor.

At this time Confucius lived. Amongst other things he wrote the Tschan-tsen, or Annals of his own time.

B.C. 213. Shi-hoang-ti, the first Emperor of all China, built the great wall, colonized Japan, conquered the parts about Nankin, and purposely destroyed all the previously existing documents upon which he could lay hand.

B.C. 94. Sse-mats-sian lived. What Shi-hoang-ti missed in the way of records, Sse-mats-sian preserved, and, as such, passes for the Herodotus China.

A destruction of the earlier records, with a subsequent reconstruction of the history which they are supposed to have embodied, is always suspicious; and when once the principle of reconstruction is admitted, no value can be attached to the intrinsic probability of a narration. It may be probable. It may be true. It cannot, however, be historical unless supported by historical testimony; since, if true, it is a guess; and if probable, a specimen of the tact of the inventor. At best, it can but be a tradition or an inference, the basis of which may be a certain amount of fact—little or great according to the temperament of the investigator.

Now, in the previous notice of the history of Chinese civilization, we have placed its claims to a high antiquity under as favourable a point of view as is allowable. They bear the appearance of truth—so much so, that if we had reason to believe that there were any means of recording them at so early an epoch as 600 years B.C., and of preserving them to so late a one as the year ’51, scepticism would be impertinent. But this is not the case. An historical fact must be taken upon evidence, not upon probabilities; and to argue the antiquity of a civilization like the Chinese from the antiquity of its history, and afterwards to claim an historical value for remote traditions on the strength of an early civilization, is to argue in a circle.