insignificance by smiling at our self-imposed satire. To esteem a
man in inverse ratio to the amount of remarkable blood he has

inherited is, to say the least, bathetic. Others, again, make
themselves objectionable by preferring their immediate relatives to

all less connected companions, and cling to their cousins so closely
that affection often culminates in matrimony, nature's remonstrances

notwithstanding. But with all the pride or pleasure which we take
in the members of our particular clan, our satisfaction really

springs from viewing them on an autocentric theory of the social
system. In our own eyes we are the star about which, as in Joseph's

dream, our relatives revolve and upon which they help to shed an
added lustre. Our Ptolemaic theory of society is necessitated by our

tenacity to the personal standpoint. This fixed idea of ours causes
all else seemingly to rotate about it. Such an egoistic conception

is quite foreign to our longitudinal antipodes. However much
appearances may agree, the fundamental principles upon which family

consideration is based are widely different in the two hemispheres.
For the far-eastern social universe turns on a patricentric pivot.

Upon the conception of the family as the social and political unit
depends the whole constitution of China. The same theory somewhat

modified constitutes the life-principle of Korea, of Japan, and of
their less advanced cousins who fill the vast centre of the Asiatic

continent. From the emperor on his throne to the common coolie in
his hovel it is the idea of kinship that knits the entire body

politic together. The Empire is one great family; the family is a
little empire.

The one developed out of the other. The patriarchal is, as is well
known, probably the oldest political system in the world. All

nations may be said to have experienced such a paternal government,
but most nations outgrew it.

Now the interesting fact about the yellow branch of the human race is,
not that they had so juvenile a constitution, but that they have it;

that it has persisted practically unchanged from prehistoric ages.
It is certainly surprising in this kaleidoscopic world whose pattern

is constantly changing as time merges one combination of its
elements into another, that on the other side of the globe this set

should have remained the same. Yet in spite of the lapse of years,
in spite of the altered conditions of existence, in spite of an

immense advance in civilization, such a primitive state of society
has continued there to the present day, in all its essentials what

it was when as nomads the race forefathers wandered peacefully or
otherwise over the plains of Central Asia. The principle helped

them to expand; it has simply cramped them ever since. For, instead
of dissolving like other antiquated views, it has become, what it

was bound to become if it continued to last, crystallized into an
institution. It had practically reached this condition when it

received a theoretical, not to say a theologicalrecognition which
gave it mundane immortality. A couple of millenniums ago Confucius

consecrated filial duty by making it the basis of the Chinese moral
code. His hand was the finishing touch of fossilification.

For since the sage set his seal upon the system no one has so much
as dreamt of changing it. The idea of confuting Confucius would be

an act of impiety such as no Chinaman could possibly commit. Not
that the inadmissibility of argument is due really to the authority

of the philosopher, but that it lies ingrained in the character of
the people. Indeed the genius of the one may be said to have

consisted in divining the genius of the other. Confucius formulated
the prevailing practice, and in so doing helped to make it perpetual.

He gave expression to the national feeling, and like expressions,
generally his, served to stamp the idea all the more indelibly upon

the national consciousness.
In this manner the family from a natural relation grew into a highly

unnatural social anachronism. The loose ties of a roving life
became fetters of a fixed conventionality. Bonds originally of

mutual advantage hardened into restrictions by which the young were
hopelessly tethered to the old. Midway in its course the race

undertook to turn round and face backwards, as it journeyed on.
Its subsequent advance could be nothing but slow.

The head of a family is so now in something of a corporeal sense.
From him emanate all its actions; to him are responsible all its parts.

Any other member of it is as incapable of individual expression as
is the hand, or the foot, or the eye of man. Indeed, Confucian

doctors of divinity might appropriately administer psychically to
the egoistic the rebuke of the Western physician to the too

self-analytic youth who, finding that, after eating, his digestion
failed to give him what he considered its proper sensations, had

come to consult the doctor as to how it ought to feel. "Feel! young
man," he was answered, "you ought not to be aware that you have a

digestion." So with them, a normally constituted son knows not what
it is to possess a spontaneity of his own. Indeed, this very word

"own," which so long ago in our own tongue took to itself the symbol
of possession, well exemplifies his dependent state. China furnishes

the most conspicuousinstance of the want of individual rights.
A Chinese son cannot properly be said to own anything. The title to

the land he tills is vested absolutely in the family, of which he is
an undivided thirtieth, or what-not. Even the administration of the

property is not his, but resides in the family, represented by its
head. The outward symbols of ownershiptestify to the fact.

The bourns that mark the boundaries of the fields bear the names of
families, not of individuals. The family, as such, is the proprietor,

and its lands are cultivated and enjoyed in common by all the
constituents of the clan. In the tenure of its real estate, the

Chinese family much resembles the Russian Mir. But so far as his
personal state is concerned, the Chinese son outslaves the Slav.

For he lives at home, under the immediate control of the paternal
will--in the most complete of serfdoms, a filial one. Even existence

becomes a communal affair. From the family mansion, or set of
mansions, in which all its members dwell, to the family mausoleum,

to which they will all eventually be borne, a man makes his life
journey in strict company with his kin.

A man's life is thus but an undivisible fraction of the family life.
How essentially so will appear from the following slight sketch of it.

To begin at the beginning, his birth is a very important event--for
the household, at which no one fails to rejoice except the new-comer.

He cries. The general joy, however, depends somewhat upon his sex.
If the baby chances to be a boy, everybody is immensely pleased; if

a girl, there is considerably less effusion shown. In the latter
case the more impulsive relatives are unmistakably sorry; the more

philosophic evidently hope for better luck next time. Both kinds
make very pretty speeches, which not even the speakers believe, for

in the babe lottery the family is considered to have drawn a blank.
A delight so engendered proves how little of the personal, even in

prospective, attaches to its object. The reason for the invidious
distinction in the matter of sex lies of course in an inordinate

desire for the perpetuation of the family line. The unfortunate
infant is regarded merely in the light of a possible progenitor.

A boy is already potentially a father; whereas a girl, if she marry
at all, is bound to marry out of her own family into another, and is

relatively lost. The full force of the deprivation is, however,
to some degree tempered by the almost infinite possibilities of

adoption. Daughters are, therefore, not utterly unmitigable evils.
From the privacy of the domesticcircle, the infant's entrance into

public life is performed pick-a-back. Strapped securely to the
shoulders of a slightly older sister, out he goes, consigned to the

tender mercies of a being who is scarcely more than a baby herself.
The diminutiveness of the nurse-perambulators is the most surprising

part of the performance. The tiniest of tots may be seen thus
toddling round with burdens half their own size. Like the dot upon

the little i, the baby's head seems a natural part of their childish
ego.

An economy of the kind in the matter of nurses is highly suggestive.
That it should be practicable thus to entrust one infant to another

proves the precociousness of children. But this surprising maturity
of the young implies by a law too well known to need explanation,

the consequent immaturity of the race. That which has less to grow
up to, naturally grows up to its limit sooner. It may even be

questioned whether it does not do so with the more haste; on the
same principle that a runner who has less distance to travel not

only accomplishes his course quicker, but moves with relatively
greater speed, or as a small planet grows old not simply sooner, but

comparatively faster than a larger one. Jupiter is still in his
fiery youth, while the moon is senile in decrepid old age, and yet

his separate existence began long before hers. Either hypothesis
will explain the abnormally early development of the Chinese race,