These certain changes in the form and content of the ancestral ideal of goodness will not only assimilate it to the ethical standard of the Western world, but, correcting some of its obvious shortcomings, will render it a still more effective force in the guidance and control of the moral life of a great and ancient people, whose day apparently is still in the future.[190] CHAPTER VI JAPANESE MORALS: AN IDEAL OF LOYALTY I. FORMATIVE AND MODIFYING INFLUENCES [Sidenote: Introductory: a practically independent evolution in morals] In their moral evolution the Japanese people have developed a system of morals which, notwithstanding certain defects and limitations, is one of the noblest created by any of the great races. A study of this system is especially interesting and instructive for the reason that it shows how a very admirable moral ideal may be created by a people in comparative isolation and under influences wholly different from those which have shaped and molded our own ideal of moral goodness. This compels a recognition of the fact that the historian of morals can no longer overlook or ignore the moral phenomena of the Far East. A second reason that a study of the Japanese code of morals is important and interesting is because this ideal of worthiness and duty has been indubitably a main factor in lifting the Japanese nation to the high place it holds to-day among the great nations of the earth. In our examination of this system of morality we must first note the nature of the agencies which lent to the moral ideal its characteristic cast. Among the various forces molding and modifying the ethical type we shall find the most important to have been the family and clan system, ancestor worship, the monarchy of supposed divine origin, feudalism, Confucianism, Buddhism, and Western civilization. [Sidenote: The family and clan system] As in China, so in Old Japan the family rather than the individual was the social unit. Through the expansion of the family arose the clan, which in the sentiments and feelings which governed its members was simply a large patriarchal household. This organization of early Japanese society, with the family and its outgrowth, the clan, forming the basis of the fabric, was, as we shall learn, a potent force in the creation of the moral type of the nation. The relationships of the kinship group determined the duties and virtues of its members and constituted the chief sphere of their moral activity. Here was the nursery of Japanese morality. [Sidenote: Shinto, or ancestor worship]