Note 664 — Chapter XI · THE STATE (B) STATE AND HISTORY

A bright light is thrown upon the formation of this picture by the fact that the descendants of the repeatedly overthrown dynasties of Hia and Shang reigned in the states of Ki-Sung throughout the Chóu period (Schindler, Das Priestertum im alten China, I, p. 30). This shows, firstly, that the picture of the Empire was mirrored back on some earlier or even perhaps a contemporary eminence of these states; and, secondly and above all, that here too “dynasty” was not what we currently mean by the name, but followed some quite different idea of the family. We may compare the fiction which made the German King, who was always chosen on Frankish territory and crowned in the sepulchral chapel of Charlemagne, into a “Frank,” so that if circumstances had been different, there might have evolved the notion of a Frankish dynasty running from Charles to Conradin (see Amira, German. Recht in Herm. Paul, Grundriss, III, p. 147, note). From the Confucian age of enlightenment this picture became the basis of a State-theory, and later still it was turned to account by the Cæsars (p. 313).