Now my reaction against Socialism was and is that it neglects the third, the moral evil, and stresses only the first and second. I am now speaking of Marxian Socialism, with which in its rigid form I early acquainted myself. The Marxian Socialist does not deny the pain felt in consequence of the inequity, nor the desire of those who suffer to become the equals of their masters; but he regards this desire as a fact of nature explicable on deterministic grounds, a consequence of improvement in the technique or tools of industry. He does not deny that there are so-called moral ideas, but he considers them epiphenomena or by-products of economic development. The tendency toward equilibrium of power in human society, termed democracy, is to him just a fact and nothing more. The mere desire for it apart from the rightness of the desire is the efficient cause which leads to social readjustments. But evidently this account of the matter will be persuasive only in case the efficient cause proves to be really efficient, that is to say, in case the desire for equilibration is on the point of effectuating itself. If it is not, if the desire of the masses for power is thwarted, if the realization of their hopes is indefinitely postponed, then the foundations of the theory are undermined. Hence Marxian Socialism has been coupled with and depends on a belief which is a kind of materialistic parallel of the apocalyptic vision of Jesus,—the belief that the end of the present world (the world of the wage system) is close at hand, only with the difference that the end is to be brought about not by divine interference but automatically by the acquisition of power on the part of the masses.