ilitary service may be found for a follower of Tolstoy, and as long as
he is willing to take his full share of burdens the difficulty is fairly
met. Again, the mere convenience of the majority cannot be fairly
weighed against the religious convictions of the few. It might be
convenient that certain public work should be done on Saturday, but mere
convenience would be an insufficient ground for compelling Jews to
participate in it. Religious and ethical conviction must be weighed
against religious and ethical conviction. It is not number that counts
morally, but the belief that is reasoned out according to the best of
one's lights as to the necessities of the common good. But the
conscience of the community has its rights just as much as the
conscience of the individual. If we are convinced that the inspection of
a convent laundry is required in the interest, not of mere official
routine, but of justice and humanity, we can do nothing but insist upon
it, and when all has been done that can be done to save the individual
conscience the common conviction of the common good must have its way.
In the end the external order belongs to the community, and the right of
protest to the individual.

On the other side, the individual owes more to the community than is
always recognized. Under modern conditions he is too much inclined to
take for granted what the State does for him and to use the personal
security and liberty of speech which it affords him as a vantage ground
from which he can in safety denounce its works and repudiate its
authority. He assumes the right to be in or out of the social system as
he chooses. He relies on the general law which protects him, and
emancipates himself from some particular law which he finds oppressive
to his conscience. He forgets or does not take the trouble to reflect
that, if every one were to act as he does, the social machine would come
to a stop. He certainly fails to make it clear how a society would
subsist in which every man should claim the right of unrestricted
disobedience to a law which he happens to think wrong. In fact, it is
possible for an over-tender conscience to consort with an insufficient
sense of social responsibility. The combination is unfortunate; and we
may fairly say that, if the State owes the utmost consideration to the
conscience, its owner owes a corresponding debt to the State. With such
mutual consideration, and with the development of the civic sense,
confl