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duly exercised this authority in the name of the Ch6u before this em-
bryonic constitution for a Sinic League of Nations fell into ^abeyance.1
Thereafter, there were occasional revivals—as, for instance, in 546 B.C.2
—of the international conferences for the preservation of peace between
parochial states which, between 679 and 628 B.C., had been convened
under the successive hegemons' auspices. It was not until after the open-
ing of the second chapter in a Sinic series of war-and-peace cycles that
the contending states finally abandoned their half-hearted quest for some
way of living peacefully side by side, and allowed their fratricidal war-
fare to degenerate into a sheer struggle for existence; and, even after the
onset of this second paroxysm of a Sinic Time of Troubles, the modera-
ting institution of hegemony seems to have been revived once or twice.3
These Sinic, Hellenic, and Western essays pointed to a possibility of
preventing the perhaps inevitable friction between parochial states from
grinding a body social to powder by recourse to some remedy less drastic
than the shattering of these trouble-making idols at the cost of mortal
injury to the suffering society itself. As an alternative to the forcible
imposition of a universal state, which had invariably proved in the event
to have been a lethal remedy for a mortal disease, might not some civili-
zation some day succeed in responding to the challenge of breakdown by
inducing the loyal subjects of still unliquidated parochial states volun-
tarily to subordinate their parochial patriotisms to an overriding alle-
giance to some paramount oecumenical institution which would be a
political embodiment of the whole of the society and not just of one or
other fragment of it ? Would not some such new solution for an old poli-
tical problem offer a more favourable expectation of life to the parochial
states themselves, as well as to the society of which these were political
articulations ? Surely, if these parochial states ceased to be a menace to
the survival of the society in virtue of ceasing to be objects of idolatrous
worship, then their votaries need no longer have to face the agonizing
choice of allowing their idolization of these parochial political institutions
to break the society up or else acquiescing in the preservation of the
society at the all but prohibitive price of allowing the parochial states,
and all the treasures associated with them, to be liquidated in order to
make way for a universal state imposed by force.

The objective on the political plane was to find a middle way between
two mutually antithetical deadly extremes: a devastating strife between

the recognition of his hegemony by the states represented at a congress which he con-
vened in 681 B.C. This arrangement was embodied in a formal diplomatic instrument ir
679/8 B.C. (see Franke, O.: Gescfrichte des Chinesischen Reiches, vol. i (Berlin and Leipzig
3930, de Gruyter), p. 161).

1 The two hSgemones whose hegemonies seem to be historical are the first two out o:
the five in the traditional list: Prince Huan of Ts'i (dominabatur 685-643 B.C.) and Princ<
W6n of Tsin (dominabatur 635-628 B.C.). In Franke's opinion (see op. cit., vol. i, p. 16*'
the hegemonies of the three last princes on the list are not so well attested by the his'
torical evidence, and Franke suggests that these three were included in order to mak<
up the tale of five, because of the significance of this number in the conventional system
of Sinic thought. The Time-span of the Age of the Hegemonies in Sinic history woulc
thus be 685-628 B.C. instead of 685-591 B.C., which is the traditional dating.
' See I. i. 89 and V. vi. 392.

3 In this period there may have been some recognition of the hegemony of Kin|
Kou-tsien of Yue (regnabat circa 500-470 B.C.) and of Prince Hiao of Ts'in (dominabatu
361-338 B.C.) according to Franke, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 162 and 177-8.