ABSTRACT
NOTHING impresses the observant Westerner more than the sharp contrast between the social organization of Europe and America and that which confronts him when he visits the East. He has left a society where ancient traditions and beliefs have been partly overthrown and everywhere challenged; where custom plays a decreasingly important part In life; where legal theory insists that an individual shall be permitted to pursue his own ends, provided he does not interfere with the freedom of others; and where the individual citizen is the social unit for whose completed development society is held to exist. In the most generous minds of the West, liberty has for centuries stood as the noblest of political ideals; and the great landmarks of our history are events which have arisen out of a demand for the opportunity of self-expression and for the right of private judgment. During the last three hundred years we have come to regard the moral responsibility of the individual for his actions as a fundamental principle of ethics and law, and consequently we have accepted the distinction between a man’s duty to the State and to his own conscience; so that even in time of war we have permitted the right of private judgment to be exercised.
