d to last,
crystallized into an institution. It had practically reached this
condition when it received a theoretical, not to say a theological
recognition 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 conspicuous instance of the wa