Herbert Spencer, and with him the sociological school generally, cannot of course accept the conclusions of a premise which they do not assume. Comparative study of the life of primitive races, scientific anthropology, and exact psychology, all show this well-meaning assumption to be a mere delusion. Philoneism may be nobler and more humane, but, unfortunately, it is only misoneism that is true. Generally speaking, every man only works in order to avoid unpleasantness. One man is urged on by his experience that hunger hurts him, the other by the whip of the slave-driver. What he fears is either the punishment of circumstances, or the punishment given by someone set over him (_cf._ Spencer, _From Freedom to Restraint_, p. 8). Work is the enemy of man; he struggles with it because he must do so in order to live; his life is a continual struggle but not (as all the Anarchists from Proudhon down to Grave try to persuade themselves and others) a united struggle of man against nature, but a struggle of men one against the other, a murderous, fratricidal conflict, from which in the end only the most suitable and capable emerges ("the survival of the fittest"). Short-sighted people and one-sided doctrinaires can never be convinced of the fact that in this brutal fact lies not only the end but also the proper beginning of unfeigned morality. And so too in social relations. Conflict, war, and persecution stand at the beginning of every civilisation and every social development; but the ceaseless hostilities of man with man have populated the earth from pole to pole with those who are most capable, powerful, and most fitted for evolution; we owe to man's hatred and fear of work the rich blessings of civilisation; and only from the swamp of servitude can spring the flower of freedom. But we must return once more to our idealists.