Confucian ideology is often criticized as the main cause of undemocratic qualities of East Asian societies. For example, some assert that since Confucian ideology extends patriarchal notions of family to nations, nations are deterred from effectively establishing public and private spheres (the family state theory). It is necessary to examine whether such criticism stems from a genuine understanding of early Confucian thought. This paper will not aim to deal with this issue directly. Rather, it will handle a more specific question that is germane to the issue: Did early Confucians actually accept the extension of the family system or order to the realm of the nation? If so, to what extent did they accept the idea? The family system or order can be extended to the realm of the nation on the assumption that the family and the nation are of the same nature to a certain degree. Arguably, early Chinese assumed that the idea of the extension was acceptable basically because the nation, like the family, was established on the basis of blood ties. This paper will raise the question of whether early Confucian thinkers also considered blood ties as the basis for the extension from family to nations. To anticipate, this paper will argue that early Confucian thinkers put a considerable limitation on the function of blood relations as the linkage between the family to the nation. This implies that early Confucians, especially Mencius, did not seriously develop the idea of the extension of the family system or order to the realm of the nation. The idea of the extension of family to nations is in fact related to an important issue in early Confucian thought, namely the extension of ren (仁). More specifically, it is related to the issue of whether a ren-person attempts to embrace many more people basically on the basis of the extension of her blood relationships or not.