ibes and races in which the
family was most completely consolidated, that is to say, those in
which the power of the father was absolute, were the ones to gain the
victory over their competitors. The reason for this is too obvious to
require even a statement. Every conquering race has accordingly
developed the "patria potestas" to a greater or less degree. Now one
general peculiarity of the Orient is that that stage of development
has remained to this day; it has not experienced those modifications
and restrictions which have arisen in the West. The national
government dealt with families and clans, not with individuals, as the
final social unit. In the West, however, the individual has become the
civil unit; the "patria potestas" has thus been all but lost. This,
added to religious and ethical considerations, has given women and
children an ever higher place both in society and in the home. Had
this loss of authority by the father been accompanied with a weakening
of the nation, it would have been an injury; but, in the West, his
authority has been transferred to the nation. These considerations
serve to render more intelligible and convincing the main proposition
of these chapters, that the distinctive emotional characteristics of
the Japanese are not inherent; they are the results of the social and
industrial order; as this order changes, they too will surely change.
The entire civilization of a land takes its leading, if not its
dominant, color from the estimate set by the people as a whole on the
value of human life. The relatively late development of the tender
affections, even in the West, is due doubtless to the extreme slowness
with which the idea of the inherent value of a human being, as such,
has taken root, even though it was clearly taught by Christ. But the
leaven of His teaching has been at work for these hundreds of years,
and now at last we are beginning to see its real meaning and its vital
relation to the entire progress of man. It may be questioned whether
Christ gave any more important impetus to the development of
civilization than by His teaching in regard to the inestimable worth
of man, grounding it, as He did, on man's divine sonship. Those
nations which insist on valuing human life only by the utilitarian
standard, and which consequently keep woman in a degraded place,
insisting on concubinage and all that it implies, are sure to wane
before those nations which loyally adopt and practice the h