Rights are more emphasized than duties. The spirit is cosmopolitan. Pretensions founded on family, or the worthiness of some ancestor, are laughed at. Social grading is on the basis of some present fact -money, efficiency, achievement education, or character. Language grows by incorporating terms which make their d but as slang.
Customary law is supplemented by legislation.
The patriarchate dissolves. Philanthropy is honored. Morality summons the individual to sacrifice himself for certain wide interests - the public, humanity, posterity, race elevation. Its sanction is not divine command, but public opinion, honor, and self-respect. In Japan an epoch of wholesale borrowing has been followed by backlook, while China, after long rusting in her bearings, is just beginning to mould herself after foreign models.