TT HAS often been contended that the highest level of social structure and control is that of morality. Religion speaks for another world rather than for this one, while the lower levels of economics and politics prove insufficient by themselves to furnish the primary aims of society as a whole. On the other hand, the social group cannot be ordered strictly from its highest level, for the higher, while more determinative than the lower, is also dependent on the lower. Although ethical value is one of the highest elements in a culture, it can only be brought into focus as such provided the institutions which exist at lower levels are functioning more or less adequately in order to support it. The higher element will, of course, eventually prevail even when such is not the case; but then a greater span of time will be required before it can exercise its full effect. We may take as an illustration of this principle the example of the classic Chinese culture of the Chou dynasty. During the last two centuries but one of the Chou dynasty, a time known as the Age of the because of the many schools which were flourishing then (approximately from 604 B.C., the conjectured birth date of Lao-Tzu, to 3I9 B.C., the date of the death of Mencius), there were many political difficulties. The Age of the ran concurrently with the Period of the Warring States. The philosophical naissance of the Chinese took place in the western provinces of China, near the frontiers. It was the task of the western frontier states to protect themselves and the rest of China against the inroads of the wandering barbarian war bands from Turkestan and the Hindu Kush. The defense of the frontier imposes the necessity for particularly well-organized government upon border states; for the chief requirement is that of political order both within and without the state. The internecine strife of the P riod of the Warring States was probably more dangerous at the marches and was therefore felt most keenly in western China by the sensitive and intellectual among the population. The philosophers of the Chou dynasty were chiefly concerned with meeting the situation presented by the collapse of the central government of China and the disruption of the country into belligerent states run byprinces wielding absolute powers. As a rule, the best minds in a generation flock to that enterprise which is thought to contain the real. In China, philosophy at that time occupied the position of eminence among the professions. Philosophers were accustomed to be sent for by reigning princes who wished to gain the benefit of philosophic counsel and advice. Let us have a quick glance, then, at the type of advice the princes, and their subjects, were receiving. In this way we may learn how the philosophers were trying to meet directly the challenge presented by the breakdown of government. There were three principal schools of philosophy in ancient China, and the challenge of political chaos was met, therefore, in different ways. All three, however, placed their chief emphasis upon ethics and morality, the theory and practice of ethics. The Confucians, led by the Analects and by Mencius, set an ethical goal-for the individual, in the pursuit of goodness; for society, in a return to the golden age of the past when government had been unified and orderly. The Taoists, led by Lao-Tzu, author of the Tao-te-Ching, and by the author of the Chuang-Tzu, set an ethical goal for the individual only, in the withdrawal into the wisdom and values of the inner self. The legalistic authors of theHan Fei Tzu and the Shang Tzu set an ethical goal for society only, in the conquest of other societies. The ethics of Confucius and Mencius was