The communistic basis of Chinese life seems closely related to the subject of the previous chapter. For let any kind of yielding and cohesive substances be compressed together, and the result will be either one solid lump, or a number of smaller lumps fitting into one another. Which latter is the case among the populations of China.

It is not claimed that the literal compression of overcrowding is in itself alone responsible for the peculiar form of solidarity to be found in China. That phenomenon seems to have been brought about by three kinds of compression. First there has been through the ages a social compression together of larger or smaller communities for common defence. Then there has been the political compression together of family groups by the adoption of the policy advocated by Confucius. And lastly, the literal compression which we have already noted.

Our earliest authentic picture of China is that of a ruling tribe, geographically settled down in the midst of semi-Chinese and more or less aboriginal tribes. This ruling State occupied the north of the present province of Honan, and from its position among semi-dependent States, was naturally called the Middle Realm, a term which afterwards came to be applied to the whole region controlled by that State, hence the modern phrase “Middle Kingdom.”