Author Michael Wood has traveled the length and breadth of China, the world’s oldest civilization and longest lasting state, to tell a thrilling story of intense drama, fabulous creativity, and deep humanity that stretches back thousands of years. Read an excerpt from his new book The Story of China below.
The philosopher Mozi (468–390 BCE) first proposed that the remedy for universal disorder was the establishment of a universal ruler. He envisioned meritocratic appointments of state officers, supervision of office holders and the unification of thought and behaviour, but with ideological conformity enforced within a strongly ordered society. Even the famous Dao De Jing, written by Laozi around the sixth century BCE, saw the logical extension of the vision of unity as a correspondence between the political and metaphysical orders: ‘The Dao is great, Heaven is great, Earth is Great, and the King is great. There are four greats in the state and the King is one of these.’ With that we are on the way to the intellectual formulation of a vision of imperial kingship, a oneness both cosmic and political. When asked how to stabilise ‘All Under Heaven’, Mencius, China’s second sage, replied: ‘Stability is in unity.’ If the ruler is humane and just, ‘nobody will not follow him: if this really happens the people will go over to him as water flows downward. Who will stop it?’
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