In a land where adopted sons are practically equivalent to lineal descendants (another instance of the “yumei-mujitsu” type of thought), and where marriage is essentially polygamous, and where the “yumei-mujitsu” spirit has allowed the sovereignty to be usurped in fact, though it may not be in name, it is not at all wonderful that the nation can boast of a longer line of Emperors than any other land.  But when monogamy becomes the rule in Japan, as it doubtless will some day, and if lineal descent should be considered essential to inheritance, as in the Occident, it is not at all likely that the Imperial line will maintain itself unbroken from father to son indefinitely.  Although the present Emperor has at least five concubines besides his wife, the Empress, and has had, prior to 1896, no less than thirteen children by them, only two of these are still living, both of them the offspring of his concubines; one of these is a son born in 1879, proclaimed the heir in 1887, elected Crown Prince in 1889, and married in 1900; he is said to be in delicate health; the second child is a daughter born in 1890.  Since 1896 several children have been born to the Emperor and two or three have died, so that at present writing there are but four living children.  These are all offspring of concubines.[R]

In speaking, however, of the Japanese apotheosis of their Emperor, we must not forget how the “divine right of kings” has been a popular doctrine, even in enlightened England, until the eighteenth century, and is not wholly unknown in other lands at the present day.  Only in recent times has the real source of sovereignty been discovered by historical and political students.  That the Japanese are not able to pass at one leap from the old to the new conception in regard to this fundamental element of national authority is not at all strange.  Past history, together with that which is recent, furnishes a satisfactory explanation for the peculiar nature of Japanese patriotism.  This is clearly due to the nature of the social order.

A further fact in this connection is that, in a very real sense, the existence of Japan as a unified nation has depended on apotheosis.  It is the method that all ancient nations have adopted at one stage of their social development for expressing their sense of national unity and the authority of national law.  In that stage of social development when the common individual counts for nothing, the only possible conception of the authority of law is that it proceeds from a superior being—­the highest ruler.  And in order to secure the full advantage of authority, the supreme ruler must be raised to the highest possible pinnacle, must be apotheosized.  That national laws should be the product of the unvalued units which compose the nation was unthinkable in an age when the worth of the individual was utterly unrecognized.  The apotheosis of the Emperor was neither an unintelligible nor an unreasonable practice.  But now that an