The explanation for this ideal and practice is not far to seek.  It rests in the communal character of the social order.  The family was the social unit of Japan.  No individual member was of worth except the legal head and representative, the father.  A striking proof of the correctness of this explanation is the fact that even the son is obeyed by the father in case he has become “in kio,"[BL] that is, has abdicated; the son then becomes the authoritative head.  The ideals regarding woman then were not unique; they were part of the social order, and were determined by the principle of “communalism” unregulated by the principle of “individualism.”  Ideals respecting man and woman were equally affected.  So long as man is not valued as a human being, but solely according to his accidental position in society, woman must be regarded in the same way.  She is valued first as a begetter of offspring, second as a domestic.  And when such conceptions prevail as to her nature and function in society, defective ideals as to morality in the narrower sense of this term, leading to and justifying concubinage, easy divorce, and general loose morality are necessary consequences.

But this moral or immoral ideal is by no means peculiar to Japan.  The peculiarity of Japan and the entire Orient is that the social order that fostered it lasted so long, before forces arose to modify it.  But, as will be shown later,[BM] the great problem of human evolution, after securing the advantages of “communalism,” and the solidification of the nation, is that of introducing the principle of individualism into the social order.  In the Orient the principle of communalism gained such headway as effectually to prevent the introduction of this new principle.  There is, in my opinion, no probability that Japan, while maintaining her isolation, would ever have succeeded in making any radical change in her social order; her communalism was too absolute.  She needed the introduction of a new stimulus from without.  It was providential that this stimulus came from the Anglo-Saxon race, with its pronounced principle of “individualism” wrought out so completely in social order, in literature, and in government.  Had Russia or Turkey been the leading influences in starting Japan on her new career, it is more than doubtful whether she would have secured the principles needful for her healthful moral development.

Justice to the actual ideals and life of Old Japan forbids me to leave, without further remark, what was said above regarding the ideals of morality in the narrower significance of this word.  Injunctions that women should be absolutely chaste were frequent and stringent.  Nothing more could be asked in the line of explicit teaching on this theme.  And, furthermore, I am persuaded, after considerable inquiry, that in Old Japan in the interior towns and villages, away from the center of luxury and out of the beaten courses of travel, there was purity of