China's Ch'in Dynasty lasted only fifteen years, yet the imperial regimen established by Shih Huang Ti, First Sovereign Emperor, survived him by twenty centuries, and we find its vestiges in China to this very day. Therefore we have available for our edification one of the greatest success stories of all time. Although very few of us hope to preside absolutely over the civilized world, many of us would enjoy a modicum of empire in our little domains, hence it behooves us to examine glaring examples of success for those principles which might serve our humbler purposes.

It might be said that Shih Huang Ti simply followed his own lucky star on the Royal Road or tao to Heaven, a High Way that is uncrowded but by no means unique. Furthermore, the same star seemingly appears for all of us to see in our own time. It is the Pole Star around which the heavens turn, and behind which we might suspect resides the First Ancestor or Cosmic Father of the universe. He might be our Highest Ancestor or Ti, the Shang Ti of the Shang Dynasty. And our guide to the Patriarchal Apex is the regular rotation of the Heavenly Gate, the Heaven or T'ien of the Chou Dynasty, the dynasty that intermingled with and overruled the Shang Dynasty before it. Thus is Shang's Ti in Chou's T'ien; in fine, the Supreme Lord is in his Home.

Mere mortals sometimes conflate the foregoing two or eliminate one or the other. We might wonder whether the Power we want and worship is personal or impersonal. According to polls ancient and modern, those who can afford a higher education tend to be talked out of blind faith in personal gods or a god, belief in spirits with arbitrary wills like our own and related superstitions. Furthermore, if ignorance is bliss and spiritual stupification is therefore something to be cultivated and called wisdom, impersonal forces should be doubted as well. But the Son of Heaven is not confused or stupid. Whether T'ien or Shang Ti is a god or gods, or the most famous Shang Dynasty king who, like other rulers, had a "Ti" attached to his name after death, or an impersonal natural law perhaps better called the Tao, all perspectives are advantageous when focused on a Son of Heaven such as Shih Huang Ti, who declared himself a "ti" or "emperor"; it appears no one else dared to use the imperial designation during the centuries-old Warring States period he concluded.

Therefore, in the simplest sense based on the imitable analogy of the Pole Star and Rotating Heaven, Shih Huang Ti had a Celestial Goal and a Plan in mind. But everything was not that simple: the Emperor was no holy fool; he also had his rational wise men and his irrational wizards advising him on several thousand years of tradition. Complex designs from history's wardrobe were laid out before him; and he, fond of making his own final decision by virtue of his sovereign shih (power, authority), selected the one that most suited him after the tailors had made the necessary alterations. The Dragon's updated power-robe had the devious threads of statecraft intertwining the lawful pattern, and, for good measure, gold and jade ornaments for longevity.

What was the primary directive of Shih Huang Ti? To bring man back into harmony with nature and thus re-establish the Great Peace of the Golden Age. Nature has its irregularities and disruptions, but its storms, eruptions and quakes are supervened by a prevailing regular order presided over by Heaven. As it is in Heaven, so shall it be on Earth, at least in the long run, so we should invest accordingly. The Mandate of Heaven specifies that the disorder of both natural and social calamities is the fault of the Son of Heaven, and if he does not repent and set things aright, he may be deposed and his dynasty replaced by another. The Heavenly Mandate is cited by the rebellious victors after the victory to confirm the legitimacy of the new regime - and the new rulers had better be duly forewarned by the same Mandate.

We recall that King Chao Cheng, king of the spartan little northwestern state of Ch'in, was born into the breakdown of feudalism known as the Warring States period (480-220 B.C.) of the Chou Dynasty (1122-221 B.C.) He brought the conflict to an end in 221 B.C. and took the name Shih Huang Ti, harkening back to the time of the legendary and mythical first emperor of the prehistoric Five Emperors: Huang Ti, the Yellow Emperor or Great God Yellow of the Central Kingdom, who warred with his brothers or gods of the four cardinal directions (whom he had sent out to establish the science of astronomy) when they spun out of control. Now the central monarch of feudal states engages warring kings and princes in order to end wars by bringing the fractious factions into familial and clannish confederation. Yet the more widespread and complex the feudal system becomes, the greater the latitude and causes for conflict and revolt. The Chou Dynasty did have the golden period mourned by Confucius; however, by the eighth century B.C., the synthetic harmony began to dissolve as local states struggled for independence; enfeoffed Chou kings lost power; people began to move around; and military prowess and skill became the criterion of success regardless of social class. Therefore the First Sovereign Emperor went much farther than the feudal monarch, and, as Son of Heaven, brought everything into lawful orbit around His Highness, dismantling the uncertain princely loyalty and honor system of the traditional feudal structure. He wanted no other gods before him: they are to be replaced by officials subject to his summary judgment. He wants no inefficient system of states rights, no confederation of princes or autonomous states spinning out of control and obstructing his Great Peace. Shih Huang Ti did not intend to bring the wandering states into alignment with the universe by means of war and diplomacy simply to reform the feudal system; he aimed to revolutionize the country so that it would revolve peacefully around the Son of Heaven.

While Ch'in Dynasty was being established, a general plan for its maintenance and progress was being brushed off and revised somewhat behind the scenes. As a matter of course, the best imperial plan rotates around the Emperor, the Cynosure of empire, as he in turn, the pious Son, follows the heavenly rotation around his Father and around his empire to boot. The First Sovereign Emperor religiously toured his empire to ostentatiously demonstrate and personally confirm that Heaven and Earth were in good order; he mounted the highest mountain to Heaven and otherwise immortalized himself along the Way. Since his goal was to bring his empire into universal harmony with the cosmic order, he built an enormous complex of palaces representing the regional centers of his domain, then toured his model as the Sun tours the Earth; one corrective source advises me that there were not two hundred and seventy palaces as I have previously claimed, but rather three hundred and sixty: one for each day.

No doubt a less extravagant model or microcosm of the Cosmos would be the main temple in the imperial capital, a divine hub the Emperor should perambulate regularly lest the Cosmos fall into disarray along with his dynasty. But Shih Huang Ti was not one to be satisfied by a single, centrally located model. In fact, continuing the habit of the Chou Dynasty, there were a hundred temples exalting astronomical bodies in Shih Huang Ti's capital; heavenly bodies such as the Sun, Moon, planets and stars were duly regarded. Moreover, many lesser temples and altars were replicated throughout the land for the good of the imitating people. Elaborate sacrifices were made at the main sites, and there was food and wine all around.

Complaints about the enormous expense of the religious exercises were secretly registered by poor scholars in their journals. Yes, numerous complaints about the expense of religion had been made in the preceding centuries, but everything about the brand new Ch'in empire was grandiose, including the state religion, which was encouraged at the expense of free-thinking Dialectic philosophy. The Mohist errant-knight religion of all-embracing love was frowned upon too, despite its totalitarian political ideology. And Confucian humanism with its unreliable reliance on moral conscience was severely suppressed in favor of severe law and order. As for magic; yes, the First Sovereign Emperor was influenced by the Taoist wizards whom he viewed as bungling scientists; but rest assured, Shih Huang Ti was the Grand Magician of the empire, the public intermediary between Heaven and Earth. As for philosophy in general, the Ch'in Dynasty ended China's golden age of philosophy: there was no feudal state left to take cover in at some unconventional school out in the sticks somewhere or the other. Imperial positive law and imperial religious order was the one and only Way.

State sanctioned religion and culture certainly serve the purpose of the Son of Heaven to bring society into harmony with the Heaven he represents. No matter how obvious the cosmic order appears to be in the heavens, mere physical imitation of the obvious does not satisfy the emotional human beings whose emotions comprise both thought and feeling. Ceremony may feel good but interest in it wanes after awhile; the merry-go-round is not so merry any more; we need a rejuvenating explanation for the visible world we imitate. We think our own feelings are moved by the invisible power of mind; we want to know more about the heavenly power which presumably moves the world into sensation; perhaps then we may get along properly with each other and the rest of the world. In any event, mere imitation will not do: we are curious and we have available to us the wonderful power of imagination and verbal communication therefor. The Emperor's favorite Legalist philosopher, Han Fei, put it this way:

"Men rarely see living elephants. When they come on the skeleton of a dead elephant (hsiang), they imagine it alive according to the configuration of the bones. The result is that whatever people use for imagining Reality is called 'an image' (hsiang). Though Tao cannot be heard and seen, the saintly man imagines its real features in the light of the present effects. Hence the saying, 'It is the form of the formless, the image of the imageless.'"

We should not be too surprised to hear the foremost advocate of positive law refer to the mysterious Tao. The wandering philosophers of the Tao were just as skeptical of traditional values and social conventions as the peripatic Sophists in Greece to whom logic-juggling and riddle-games were a favorite pastime. No doubt after every argument is equally opposed and everything is boiled down to Nothing, some lawyer-sage contemplating anarchy and starvation might advocate the end of all arguments in the absolute law of the Son of Heaven enforced by reward and punishment. Poor Han Fei did so most brilliantly, and was eventually forced into suicide by his jealous fellow student and staunch Legalist, Li Ssu, Shih Huang Ti's prime minister.

But the imagination I have in mind does not begin and end in a Taoist denial of images and formal differences, nor does it conclude with totalitarian equality under positive law or in the paradoxical assertion of Nothing. No, I want to return to the bones of the dead elephant to see what was more vividly imagined in the older days. I recall the Indian elephant, especially a white one, was indispensable to heroes, kings and gods as their transcendental transportation, just as was the dragon in China. In fact, the Chinese considered the elephant to be a sort of dragon. In order to understand the First Sovereign Emperor who was, before all, the Dragon, it is necessary to break the official religious mold and to examine the legendary and mythological underpinnings of empire.