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.