By citizen I mean the duties and rights that each member of a political has towards the state of which he forms a part. No other English word, so far as I know, fully expresses these complex relations ; “patriotism,” “nationality,” “suffrage,” are all in different ways too narrow. If the word itself is a comparatively new one, the idea which it expresses is as old as civilized society. It reaches back to the time when men first began to group themselves together in societies for common life and government more comprehensive than the village and more concentrated and developed that the life of the horde or of the tribe. I cannot venture into the field of the anthropologist and discuss the possible sources of the city, nor am enough of a philosopher to examine the philosophic basis of civic life: I would rather call attention to the idea of citizenship as exhibited in different stages of the world’s history, i.e., in the western world of Europe and America, to which it distinctively belongs. Such a survey may suggest to us what conception of citizenship we at the end of the nineteenth century may appropriate as our own. Every now and again it is well for us to re-examine the current terms of our political and social conversation, that we may realize the significance which use and habit and the wear and tear of time have dimmed to our eyes. Possibly we may discover, by the way, new matters of interest, in any case, we may clear up our ideas.