What ideas did Confucius teach, and how were they spread after his death?

The Warring States Period was the golden age of Chinese philosophy, the era when the “Hundred Schools of Thought” contended. During the same period in which Indian sages and mystics were developing religious speculation about karma, souls, and ultimate reality (see Chapter 3), Chinese thinkers were arguing about the ideal forms of social and political organization and man’s connections to nature.