ose of
government ought to be agreed upon, if for no other reason that we may
have some principle which will give us continuity in our educational
work.

Consider the varieties of political creed now offered us, and there
can be little doubt both of the difficulty and the necessity of
finding guiding principles for the practical life and to preserve
sanity of mind. The monarchical idea still lingers; there is a variety
of conceptions of democracy, differing widely; there are
socialists--state socialists, Marxian socialists of the old line,
Bolshevists, regionalists, syndicalists, and others--and anarchists of
pure blood. Of internal and party differences, policies, and plans
there is no end. Through all these we have to thread our way, and
reach what conclusions we can.

No American can of course be expected to see the question of
government otherwise than through American eyes. He is to some extent
prejudiced and bound to the ideas of liberty, individualism, and
democracy, whatever his variety of party politics be. Democracy he may
regard as an assumption, but it will seem now even more than ever a
necessary assumption upon which to build a working conception of
government.

We have to look somewhere in actual life for the elements and
principles of government. Why should we not look for them in American
life, where government has grown up comparatively free from traditions
and prejudices and where it has been by all the ordinary tests
_successful_? There has been something both ideal and generic in
American life. Whatever personal equation may be involved in saying
this, the point of view has some objective justification. It is a
genetic method, at least. In early American life society was simple,
and life was earnest, and we see government and the individual in
their essential relations to one another.

In this primitive and yet modern society we see the individual as a
collection of functions, so to speak, existing in a group. The
individual also has various desires, which do not appear to be wholly
in agreement with his social functions. Some of these desires of
individuals are strongly antagonistic to society. In this society,
government is plainly the means of protecting the individual or the
group, by the suggestion or the exertion of lawful force, from the
threat of lawless force. Law is a means of enabling and also
compelling the individual _to perform the various functions which_
belong to him as an in