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of individual rights. A Chinese son cannot properly be said to own
anything. The title to the land he tills is vested absolutely in the
family, of which he is an undivided thirtieth, or what-not. Even the
administration of the property is not his, but resides in the family,
represented by its head. The outward symbols of ownership testify to the
fact. The bourns that mark the boundaries of the fields bear the names
of families, not of individuals. The family, as such, is the proprietor,
and its lands are cultivated and enjoyed in common by all the
constituents of the clan. In the tenure of its real estate, the Chinese
family much resembles the Russian Mir. But so far as his personal state
is concerned, the Chinese son outslaves the Slav. For he lives at home,
under the immediate control of the paternal will--in the most complete
of serfdoms, a filial one. Even existence becomes a communal affair.
From the family mansion, or set of mansions, in which all its members
dwell, to the family mausoleum, to which they will all eventually be
borne, a man makes his life journey in strict company with his kin.

A man's life is thus but an undivisible fraction of the family life. How
essentially so will appear from the following slight sketch of it.

To begin at the beginning, his birth is a very important event--for the
household, at which no one fails to rejoice except the new-comer. He
cries. The general joy, however, depends somewhat upon his sex. If the
baby chances to be a boy, everybody is immensely pleased; if a girl,
there is considerably less effusion shown. In the latter case the
more impulsive relatives are unmistakably sorry; the more philosophic
evidently hope for better luck next time. Both kinds make very pretty
speeches, which not even the speakers believe, for in the babe lottery
the family is considered to have drawn a blank. A delight so engendered
proves how little of the personal, even in prospective, attaches to its
object. The reason for the invidious distinction in the matter of sex
lies of course in an inordinate desire for the perpetuation of the
family line. The unfortunate infant is regarded merely in the light of
a possible progenitor. A boy is already potentially a father; whereas a
girl, if she marry at all, is bound to marry out of her own family into
another, and is relatively lost. The full force of the deprivation is,
however, to some degree tempered by the almost infinite possibilities of
ad