This thought exalts the individual, and, {110} therefore, sins which degrade our own personality become most repulsive. Thus, among high-minded men truth is almost first among the virtues, and an accusation of falsehood the most hateful of insults. For truth seems peculiarly personal and spiritual, as if belonging to the very sanctuary of one's nature. And in like manner, among women, in popular esteem chastity is of the essence of morality, as its violation seems to contaminate and debase her holiest self. Now the Confucian ethics rest upon a quite different principle, and in this are at one with the ancient teaching of the Greeks and Romans. The supreme duty is not to the self, but to the organization of which one is but a part--that is, to the family or to the state. The great Chinese moralists were statesmen, and their chief concern was, not the salvation of the individual, but the peace and prosperity of the state. In their view, the family was the unit, and the state a greater family. So the conflict of duties, in their questions of casuistry, is never between individual and social duties, but between duties owed to family and to state. Loyalty to the state and obedience to parents must be supreme; but China and Japan differ as to the value of these two. According to original Confucianism, the first duty of men is obedience to parents; the second, loyalty to rulers; but in Japan the order of these {111} duties has been changed, the second being given first place. The people have learned well this teaching of Confucius. Japan was prepared soil for its sowing. The native religion taught that the emperor was a direct descendant of heaven, who ruled by divine right; the provincial lords were his ministers, and hence loyalty was a plain duty. The Confucian teaching only strengthened, deepened, and gave form and outline to a sentiment already existing. This principle of loyalty thus became the foundation stone of Japanese ethics, and one's duty to one's lord paramount to all other duties. In the olden times the people did not look beyond their own feudal lords and clans to the emperor and the nation. They were to be faithful unto death to these, but no further. Now that loyalty once shown to the local princes and clans finds its apotheosis in the emperor and the empire.