Abstract

Much has been said on the importance of the individual: the individual is to be respected; there is value in his self-assertiveness; his desires merit fulfilment. Yet it has been remarked not less that the individual is not independent; for his sustenance and his satisfaction he needs to have commerce with nature and society; and the term “tradition,” which makes us mindful of the prolonged, apparently interminable succession of the generations, reminds us also that in the universal procession of events the life of the individual is but as nothing, that it is very fragile and inevitably ephemeral; and that torn from the fabric of his community, deprived