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This article focuses on the book "The Civilizations of the East," vol. 3, "China; vol. 4, "Japan," by René Grousset and Alfred A. Knopf. After a summary of Chinese culture in the prehistoric period, M. Grousset takes up the bronze ritual vessels of the Chou period, the mighty caidrons that were used in the great annual sacrifice to heaven and that formed the very palladia of empire. These bronzes embody alike the grandness and the austere simplicity for which the Chou period has invariably stood in the Chinese imagination--a period of mighty rulers, of the great classical scholars, the age which, to the Chinese scholar, has been what the Hellenic past has been for Western civilization.