provided candidates for the highest offices of state, and
further, the actual authority seemed about to pass to
the retainers of such high officials, who, from the eyes
of the rulers of the kingdoms, were but arrière-vassals.

Internationally, there prevailed a situation of chronic
warfare: within the kingdoms, there were sudden out-
breaks of internecine disorder and unhappy ill-starred
incidents such as the assassination of the ruler frequently
occurred. Confucius, unable to bear to look on this
anarchy and lawlessness, is said to have planned to add
his own comments to the official state chronicle of Lu,
in the hope that, by giving prominence to the conduct
of insurgent ministers who slew their princes, and of
rebel sons who murdered their fathers, he might induce
some spirit of self-examination in the people of the time;
hence his resolve to compile the 'Ch'un-ch'iu'.

Whether Confucius did in fact compile the 'Ch'un-
ch'iu' has become a matter of considerable doubt for
recent scholars, and there are those who would argue
that this is no more than a tradition passed on within
one sect of Confucianism. The problem of the veracity
of this tradition will be discussed in detail later: the very
existence of the tradition, however, reveals the age as
one in which the organization of strictly defined social
ranks of Emperor, lord, minister, senior officer and
knight, built on the basis of the system of the Chou royal
court--the political and social structure to which we
have come to give the name of feudalism--was gradually
being dismembered. The several kingdoms which had
asserted their independence during this period con-
tinued to make war on each other, and in the age that
followed, (which lasted from 478 to 220 B.C., and is
called 'The Period of the Seven Kingdoms'), they came
to be ranged into seven powerful states, and waged war
still more savagely, so that this period is also styled 'TheAge of the Warring States'

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