Similar ideas formerly prevailed, and to some extent are still found, among the civilized nations of the Old World. The Chinese have a maxim that, as the Emperor should have a father’s love for his people, so a father should have a sovereign’s power over his family.[1394] From earliest youth the Chinese lad is imbued with such respect for his parents that it becomes at last a religious sentiment, and forms, as he gets older, the basis of his only creed—the worship of ancestors.[1395] Disobedience to parents is looked upon as a sin to be punished with death, whether the offender be an infant or a full-grown son or daughter. And in everything referring to the marriage of the children parents are omnipotent. “From all antiquity in China,” Navarette says, “no son ever did, or hereafter will, marry without the consent of his parents.”[1396] Indeed, according to Mr. Medhurst, it is a universally acknowledged principle in China that no person, of whatever age, can act for himself in matrimonial matters during the lifetime or in the neighbourhood of his parents or near senior kinsfolk. The power of these guardians is so great that they may contract a marriage for a junior who is absent from home, and he is bound to abide by such engagement even though already affianced elsewhere without their privity or consent.[1397] The consequence of this system is that, in many cases, the betrothed couple scarcely know each other before marriage, the wedding being the first occasion on which the man catches a glimpse of his wife’s face.[1398] In some parts of the Empire children are affianced in infancy.[1399]