Plainly we are to-day in a time of flux in which ideas and institutions are unsettled, and there is a great variety of political theories of all kinds. We can hope to find no agreement among theorists and certainly no common ground for the reconciliation of conflicting parties. Still, even for the most practical daily life we must find some guiding principles. We must look for some means of bringing order out of the present diversity and conflict. Some valuation of government, some idea of the ultimate purpose 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.