ken for ages eternal. If the Imperial house cease to exist, the
Empire falls."

In a land where adopted sons are practically equivalent to lineal
descendants (another instance of the "yumei-mujitsu" type of thought),
and where marriage is essentially polygamous, and where the
"yumei-mujitsu" spirit has allowed the sovereignty to be usurped in
fact, though it may not be in name, it is not at all wonderful that
the nation can boast of a longer line of Emperors than any other land.
But when monogamy becomes the rule in Japan, as it doubtless will some
day, and if lineal descent should be considered essential to
inheritance, as in the Occident, it is not at all likely that the
Imperial line will maintain itself unbroken from father to son
indefinitely. Although the present Emperor has at least five
concubines besides his wife, the Empress, and has had, prior to 1896,
no less than thirteen children by them, only two of these are still
living, both of them the offspring of his concubines; one of these is
a son born in 1879, proclaimed the heir in 1887, elected Crown Prince
in 1889, and married in 1900; he is said to be in delicate health; the
second child is a daughter born in 1890. Since 1896 several children
have been born to the Emperor and two or three have died, so that at
present writing there are but four living children. These are all
offspring of concubines.[R]

In speaking, however, of the Japanese apotheosis of their Emperor, we
must not forget how the "divine right of kings" has been a popular
doctrine, even in enlightened England, until the eighteenth century,
and is not wholly unknown in other lands at the present day. Only in
recent times has the real source of sovereignty been discovered by
historical and political students. That the Japanese are not able to
pass at one leap from the old to the new conception in regard to this
fundamental element of national authority is not at all strange. Past
history, together with that which is recent, furnishes a satisfactory
explanation for the peculiar nature of Japanese patriotism. This is
clearly due to the nature of the social order.

A further fact in this connection is that, in a very real sense, the
existence of Japan as a unified nation has depended on apotheosis. It
is the method that all ancient nations have adopted at one stage of
their social development for expressing their sense of national unity
and the authority of national law. In that stage of social