Significant differences may be observed in the general attitude toward government among the people in the great nations of the world. Each nation appears to have its own political temperament, and this quite apart from the views represented especially by political parties and the like, and quite independently of the scientific and philosophical conceptions of government and its functions of which there are a great number, and among them certainly no agreement upon the main issues and values. Taking public opinion as a whole, Germany, England, France and America seem to represent distinctly different attitudes toward government. The State in the German philosophy of life, as every one is now aware, is all; the individual derives his reality and his value, so to speak, from the idea of the supreme state. Individuality and freedom in this philosophy of life do not refer to _political_ individuality and freedom at all. In England, and perhaps to some extent in all democratic countries, the prevailing thought seems to be that the government that governs the least is, on the whole, the best government. The English government is supposed to be the servant of the people, and the individual has been in the habit of looking to the government for many services. The individual, free and self-determined, is the unit of value and of society, and the regulation of his conduct by government is at best a necessary evil. It came as a surprise to the Englishman when he realized that the state could command the most personal service and the most complete surrender of the property rights of the individual. Le Bon says that the Frenchman, too, thinks of the state as something to be kept at a minimum and to a certain extent to be opposed. Opposition to the government is a part of the Frenchman's plan of life. Boutroux says the same--that in France the habit of thinking of the government and of society as two rivals has not been overcome. Our own idea of government is certainly somewhat different from these. We are watchful of individual right, but we do not tend to think of government either as opponent or as servant. We do not ask the government to take care of us as individuals, and we do not feel in the public attitude the resistance to government that the French writers observe in France. The American expects on the whole to look out for his own interests and he has never felt the pressure and over-powering force of government--until perhaps now. Mabie says that the American has conceived of his government as existing to keep the house in order while the family lived its life freely, every individual following the bent of his own genius.