SOCIOLOGICAL.                              607

  We have long been interested in a specific case, curious as to the outcome
of modern thought when applied to an Oriental prince who has recently
come into his kingdom. He was educated in England, where he made many
friends and seemed to have assimilated their Anglo-Saxon ideals of personal
purity and social decency. Unexpectedly he was summoned to become the
ruler of a little principality in India. In his farewell to his English friends
he assured them that he was going to new and untried tasks, but, that
whatever happened, he should "play the game." He expressed himself
in sporting phrase because he had been a famous lover of English sports and
an expert in playing the games. Now what must happen to such a man
when he takes his place in his ancestral halls as the ruler of people to whom
his ideals and habits are as foreign as if he had descended from the moon?
There is only one thing he can do, that is to fall in with his fellow-country-
men and play the game after the manner prescribed by immemorial custom.
He must marry among his own people, he must adopt, in the apartments
occupied by the women of his household, not English, but Hindu, customs
and manners: he will be hemmed in on every side by obnoxious social and
religious customs which he must treat without the slightest appearance of
disdain. In short, he must revert in essentials to the state from which by
his English education he has been emancipated, else his life would quickly
pay the forfeit.
   The case cited is an extreme instance of the general law that liberty is
limited by the necessity of living at peace with one's neighbors and of secur-
ing this peace by conformity to that which on the whole the community
decrees as best for everybody. That law is in force in all lands. In these
days we hear much about liberty, as if it were an achieved and well-estab-
lished condition of human progress, whereas the truth is that it is under-
stood by an infinitesimal part of the human race and enjoyed by a still small-
er number. There are men and women who have cast off the restraint of
creeds who in politics, in business, and in social life are able to enjoy and glory
in all the privileges of a free state and who boast that they are wholly
emancipated. Let them test the matter! Let them keep strictly within
the limits drawn by the Ten Commandments, and then, in all the non-
essentials, practice the law of perfect liberty and see where they will come
out. If his clothing is not made and worn with some regard to the fashion
of the times, a man will find himself excluded from most places of public
resort, and a woman who disregards the conventions of polite society will
have no peace and little companionship with her neighbors. A very little
divergence from the commonly accepted habits of business men will cause
avoidance and suspicion as to the perfect sanity of one who is eccentric.
   We flatter ourselves that we enjoy a great measure of freedom only be-
cause birds of a feather flock together. Where there are enough people of
one way of thinking, they may with each other do and say with impunity
that which, if exposed to the observation of the outside world, would breed
for them trouble and sorrow. In a civilized community, a partial degree
of liberty is secured by multiplying these groups and defending them from



			

OHS/National Afro-American Museum & Cultural Center Serial Collection

African Methodist Episcopal Church Review, Vol. 28, Num. 2

Volume:  28
Issue Number:  02
Date:  10/1911