Page:Jay William Hudson - America's International Ideals (1915).djvu/22



But while America has stood for the priceless value of the individual, she has also insisted that individuals are social by nature, and that they have not only individual rights, but social responsibilities. Now, this social nature of the individual seems to be one of the most difficult conceptions for even enlightened people to attain. It is easy to think of the goal of civilization, the unit of progress, as being either society or the individual; but it is not so easy to see that the true unit of progress is neither society nor the individual abstracted from each other, but both taken together. The danger of modern individualism, even as exemplified in America, is to suppose that, since the individual is everything, society is nothing, and that social obligations are secondary to individual self-assertion. The fact, is, however, that no individual is anything at all by himself, conceived apart from his fellows. Thus, while America has been insisting upon the rights of the individual, it must never be forgotten that this individual is a social individual, whose every right is balanced by a corresponding obligation to others. In other words, individuals are socially interdependent in all the interests which go to make up human welfare. For all that he values, the modern man must rely upon the social institutions of which he is a part. His education, his pleasures, his economic prosperity, his religion, his culture, all are social in their nature,—unattainable save in terms of co-operation with his fellow man. This outward social co-operation, as expressed in social institutions, is merely the external expression of the deep and eternal truth that man is social by nature and does not end with that narrower