In Russia, Count Leo Tolstoi (1828-1910)_(_66_)_ lets loose the force of the ethical thinking of Jesus. He does not, like others, interpret his words as teaching a social idealism focused on the service of systematic purposive effort, but allows them to be the commands to the absolute, uncalculating devotion which their author meant them to be. In his _Confessions_, which in the eighties were read throughout the world, the lava of primitive Christianity pours itself into the Christianity of modern times. The social-ethical movement produces most result in Germany, because in that country the State welcomes it in the person of the Hohenzollerns. In 1883 and 1884 the Reichstag passes, in spite of the disapproving attitude of the Social Democratic Party, laws for the protection of the worker which may be considered to be models of their kind. In the bosom of socialism itself thoughtful spirits like Eduard Bernstein (b. 1850),_(_67_)_ and others, come to see that even the most effective measures taken for the social organization of society cannot succeed unless there is a strong [pg 164] ethical idealism behind them as their driving force. This is a return to the spirit of Lassalle. There exists, then, an active social-ethical temper. But it is nevertheless only a trickling stream of water in a big river-bed. That the reforms called for under the guidance of ethics can be realized is no longer a general conviction, as it was in the age of rationalism. The ethical temper which wishes to work for the future of mankind becomes less and less appreciated. In the victory, so fateful for the development of civilized mankind, won by Marxian State-socialism over the social ideas of Lassalle which allow much more natural play to the forces of reality, we see an expression of the fact that in the mentality of the masses the belief-in-progress has emancipated itself from ethics and has become mechanical. Confusion in the conception of civilization and ruin of the civilized temper are the consequence of this disastrous separation. The spirit of the modern age renounces thereby the very thing which really constituted its strength.