which there are a great
number, and among them certainly no agreement upon the main issues and
values.

Taking public opinion as a whole, Germany, England, France and America
seem to represent distinctly different attitudes toward government. The
State in the German philosophy of life, as every one is now aware, is
all; the individual derives his reality and his value, so to speak,
from the idea of the supreme state. Individuality and freedom in this
philosophy of life do not refer to _political_ individuality and
freedom at all. In England, and perhaps to some extent in all
democratic countries, the prevailing thought seems to be that the
government that governs the least is, on the whole, the best
government. The English government is supposed to be the servant of the
people, and the individual has been in the habit of looking to the
government for many services. The individual, free and self-determined,
is the unit of value and of society, and the regulation of his conduct
by government is at best a necessary evil. It came as a surprise to the
Englishman when he realized that the state could command the most
personal service and the most complete surrender of the property rights
of the individual.

Le Bon says that the Frenchman, too, thinks of the state as something
to be kept at a minimum and to a certain extent to be opposed.
Opposition to the government is a part of the Frenchman's plan of
life. Boutroux says the same--that in France the habit of thinking of
the government and of society as two rivals has not been overcome.

Our own idea of government is certainly somewhat different from these.
We are watchful of individual right, but we do not tend to think of
government either as opponent or as servant. We do not ask the
government to take care of us as individuals, and we do not feel in
the public attitude the resistance to government that the French
writers observe in France. The American expects on the whole to look
out for his own interests and he has never felt the pressure and
over-powering force of government--until perhaps now. Mabie says that
the American has conceived of his government as existing to keep the
house in order while the family lived its life freely, every
individual following the bent of his own genius.

These temperamental attitudes toward government, we said, seem quite
apart from scientific and philosophic conceptions of state. We see,
however, something of the temperament refle