(E-BOOK) Readings in Chinese Philosophy

There are few nations in the world today that can boast of a continuous history going back three thousand years. In fact, I can think of only one: China. There were civilizations which developed earlier; for instance, that of Egypt; but there is not the same continuity of cultural tradition between ancient Egypt and modern Egypt as between ancient China and modern China. To most modern Egyptians, the hieroglyphs of Memphis and Thebes are completely illegible; whereas many of the ideograms in the oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty, which flourished in the thirteenth century B.C., present no difficulty to a modern Chinese school boy.