Nothing shows or hints that Shang-ti is merely an imaginary idealised first ancestor.

Yesterday, as it seemed, Soo-ti was a young dog, capable of holding his own for frolics and spirits with any Pekinese that ever owned the crown of the road and refused to stir from it though all the hooters of Europe endeavoured to blast him off it.

Closer research has shown that Shih Huang-ti was evidently an average man without any great gifts, that he was superstitious, and shared the tendency of his time to mystical and shamanistic notions.

It was said to have belonged to Queen Ti, the mother of our friend Amenhotep the Fourth; but I don't think that could have been so, because the device on it was the Eye of Osiris, and Ti, as you know, was an Aten-worshipper.

Ti is the Iroquois particle for water, as in Tioga, &c.

In China, as we shall see, Mr. Tylor thinks, on the other hand, that Heaven is the elder god, and that Shang-ti, the Supreme Being, is the usurper.

Thus at a stroke Huang Ti, who about 450 B.C. had been a local god in the region of southern Shansi, became the forefather of almost all the noble families, including that of the imperial house of the Chou.