Page:Jay William Hudson - America's International Ideals (1915).djvu/24

 no means signifies license. No, the freedom of democracy is a social freedom, not a freedom to seek one's own regardless of others. The freedom of American democracy means the freedom of every man to seek the social goal, his larger self, in accordance with his own reason, indeed: but voluntarily and freely subject to the reason of all. This is what American law means. Perhaps no other people appeal to law more for the regulation of the social order than do Americans. Their liberty is seemingly curbed on every side by the laws which they have put upon the statute books. How, then, with all this restraint of law, can the American individual be said to be free? He is free, not because he is not subject to law, but because this law is not legislated upon him from without, but is created through his own reason and his own conviction and is thus his own product, which he freely recognizes as a just restraint for the sake of a social order which he freely wants and for which he is freely responsible.

But again, the European conflict arises out of a conception of society which utterly ignores the social responsibilities of individuals and groups. The citizens of certain European nations may not, indeed, be so short-sighted as to suppose that their selves end with their individual persons; but there is an overwhelming tendency for them to conceive of their fundamental interests, and thus their fundamental responsibilities, as ending with the boundaries of their particular nations. But this is to deny the entire trend of the development of modern civilization, as well as to deny the social nature and responsibilities of national groups with reference to each other. Just as an individual can never circumscribe his social nature and duties within any arbitrarily