For the far-eastern social universe turns on a patricentric pivot.
Upon the conception of the family as the social and political unit depends the whole constitution of China.

The same theory somewhat modified constitutes the life-principle of Korea, of Japan, and of their less advanced cousins who fill the vast centre of the Asiatic continent.
From the emperor on his throne to the common coolie in his hovel it is the idea of kinship that knits the entire body politic together.

The Empire is one great family; the family is a little empire.
The one developed out of the other.

The patriarchal is, as is well known, probably the oldest political system in the world.

All nations may be said to have experienced such a paternal government, but most nations outgrew it.
Now the interesting fact about the yellow branch of the human race is, not that they had so juvenile a constitution, but that they have it; that it has persisted practically unchanged from prehistoric ages.