(Written for the North-China In no country of the modern world, perhaps, are the people of a vast nation, as in China, regarded asa social unit—one gigantic family, with the emperor as the father of them all. Here the ruler has arrow gated to himself a unique honour, for he is the one great link by which all'this mass of uneducated and unwashed humanity is affiliated to Heaven. He is the "Son of Heaven," and at the same time the father of the people. Therefore Heaven is the grandfather of the Chinese, and we find that in their colloquial religious phraseology, the people address Heaven as their " Heaven-grandfather," and worship this somewhat Vague personality as an Ancestor. The clan, too, in a village can be regarded as little else than a large family. Generally speaking, the members all bear the same family name. They all have a common interest in the general property, such as the fish-pond, the orchard and the well. One toothless and decrepit ancient, conspicuous for his beard and whiskers, is nominally the head of the clan, and the decisions of the aged worthy are regarded as the utterances of a or an oracle, which are listened to awe by the other members of the fraterni The family proper is, of course, the cell out of which the clan has been evolved, and we should have expected to find more references thereto in the semi-political, semireligious utterances of China's teachers, They do not appear to have been very numerous. It may be said that the ideal of the family which obtains in the West, where father, mother, and children live together, without fear of invasion from other relatives, does not exist for China. It is neither referred to in their Classics nor found in actual life. "Where can a man be better," says Gretry, "than. in the bosom of his family?" But often enough a Chinese family has no "bosom," but is all arms and numerous that phrase, "Bosom of the family" implies'do not and never have existed. The traveller who may have visited Chinese villages will rarely find in the wretched little houses the husband and wife living alone with their children, In China, families are built up of three or four generations, who live and eat and sleep under the same roof, who grumble and smile, work and are file, who five and die, aad never seem to think that there is anything better within or beyond the "four seas." Goethe says "Tu the family, where the house-father rules secure, there dwells the peace which thou wilt in vain seek elsewhere, in the wide world outside." Such an object lesson is seldom met with in China, for most likely the "house-father" is away attending to bus-lines in some of the great seaports like Cuuton or Hankow, or even away on the "Golden Mountain," and the home is ruled over by some ancient patriarch only less aged than he who rules the clan, in which the village stands, whilst the old grandmother holds her iron sceptre over the feminme members of the household.
Mencius quotes a saying of the common people, which makes the family the basis Of the empire: "The root of the empire is the State. e root of the State is the family. 'The root of the family is in the person of its head." But he has given it a meaning which originally the saying was not intended to convey. Renan has said that "family virtues are indispensable to the proper continuation' of a society," and this is what the proverb, quoted by Mencius, seems to connote. He, however, gives it a totally different twist, as he adds: "The administration of government is not difticult; it lies in not offending the great families" He therefore seems to regard the empire "s little else than the emperor who rules over it and his supporters for the time being, and assumes that in order that he may sit peacefully upon, and that they may firmly surround the dragon throne, the wealthy, learned, and rich families who wield so much power must not be offended. The results of this teaching are seen to-day in every prefecture of the empire. If he had taught the ruling powers to do what.is right and fearlessly administer the law,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.