ments in the world are capable of
bringing to bear, quite constitutionally, absolute control over the
most basic possessions of the individual, has led many to ask
seriously whether government is after all a good in itself, or is
merely a necessity having many attendant evils. They wish to know
whether there is in the principle of government something that takes
precedence over all the assumed rights of the individual. Does
government, they inquire, have a _right_ to the individual; or is it
only in _serving_ the individual that it is entitled to exercise
authority that limits the individual?

These are questions, manifestly, that involve the whole foundation of
sociology, but we need not be unduly dismayed at that. This is a time
when naive thinking and exact science must make compromises with one
another. For better or for worse we must find some working hypothesis
upon which a fair adjustment may be made in the practical life of the
present moment. This _working hypothesis_ must also serve--and perhaps
that is after all its main function--as something to guide us,
something having solidity upon which we can stand, in performing our
work as educators.

What we need, what we believe all feel now the need of, is a
conception of government satisfying to the multitude of common people.
We wish to know whether we live for the state, we say, or whether the
state lives for us. We wish to understand what the basic rights and
duties of the individual are. As average individuals, willing to give
service in any cause that seems good, we do not ask so much to have
determined for us precisely what type of government best satisfies the
requirements of science or philosophy, but what the best working basis
for harmonious adjustment in the social life of the future is to be.
These enquiring moods on the part of the people are a part of the
temperament that has issued from the war. We shall make a mistake if
we regard it as a mere passing effect, however; _it means a deep
stirring of the political consciousness of people throughout the
world_.

Significant differences may be observed in the general attitude toward
government among the people in the great nations of the world. Each
nation appears to have its own political temperament, and this quite
apart from the views represented especially by political parties and
the like, and quite independently of the scientific and philosophical
conceptions of government and its functions of