The body of thought that will have the most enduring effect on subsequent Chinese life is that of the School of Literati (ru), often called the Confucian school in the West.

The written legacy of the School of Literati is embodied in the Confucian Classics, which are to become the basis for the order of traditional society.

Confucius (551-479 BCE), also called Kong Zi, or Master Kong, looks to the early days of Zhou rule for an ideal social and political order.

He believes that the only way such a system can be made to work properly is for each person to act according to prescribed relationships.

"Let the ruler be a ruler and the subject a subject." he says, but he adds that to rule properly a king must be virtuous.

To Confucius, the functions of government and social stratification are facts of life to be sustained by ethical values.

His ideal is the junzi (ruler's son), which comes to mean gentleman in the sense of a cultivated or superior man.