For here did valor flourish and deeds of warlike might
Ennobled lordly palaces in which was our delight.
The gardens of thy Vega, its fields and blooming bowers,
Woe, woe! I see their beauty gone, and scattered all their flowers!"
XII
WOMEN OF CHINA AND COREA
China, once the country of perpetual calm, has in recent years become the land of magnificent disturbances. Not an unimportant factor in the changes that have lately taken place in the Flowery Kingdom has been woman. The influence of the women of the nations is generally centripetal. Of the peoples of the earth the Chinese would doubtless be named as altogether the most conservative, and in this conservatism the Chinese women play a most important part.
Ancestry worship has marked this people from time immemorial, and if there be one characteristic of Chinese life stronger than all the rest, it is that of filial piety. This regard is not taught to end with childhood, but is to be lasting even in mature manhood. From the lowliest subject to the emperor himself the rule is imperative. The latter is father of the people of the realm, and as such is to be reverenced; he in turn is the son of Heaven. Confucius was careful to instil into his pupils filial regard--a virtue which the sages before him had urged upon the people. To such teachings is to be attributed much that is best in Chinese life.
Thus the Chinese system is a gigantic patriarchal system with its base resting on the earth, its head penetrating heaven. Mencius spoke often and in no uncertain words upon this theme. "Of all that a filial son can attain to, there is nothing greater than his honoring his parents. Of what can be attained to in honoring his parents, there is nothing greater than nourishing them with the whole Empire. To be the father of the son of Heaven is the highest nourishment." In this may be verified the sentence in the Book of Poetry: