Revolutions in the relations of life between individuals, society, and peoples, as they follow in the train of our great material achievements, make, if they are to show real progress in the sense of valuable civilization, higher demands on the habit of thought of civilized people, just as the increased speed of a ship presupposes greater reliability in rudder and steering gear. Advances in knowledge and power work out their effects on us almost as if they were natural occurrences. It is not within our power so to direct them that they influence favourably in every respect the relations in which we live, but they produce for individuals, for society, and for nations, difficult and still more difficult problems, and bring with them dangers which it is quite impossible to estimate beforehand. Paradoxical as it may seem, our advances in knowledge and power make true civilization not easier but more difficult. One can even say that, judging by the events of our own and the two preceding generations, we are almost entitled to doubt whether in view of the way in which these material achievements have been showered upon us, true civilization is still possible. The most widespread danger which material achievements bring with them for civilization consists in the fact that through the revolutions in the conditions of life men [pg 004] become in greater numbers unfree, instead of free. The type of man who once cultivated his own bit of land becomes a worker who tends a machine in a factory; manual workers and independent trades-people become employees. They lose the elementary freedom of the man who lives in his own house and finds himself in immediate connexion with Mother Earth. Further, they no longer have the extensive and unbroken consciousness of responsibility of those who live by their own independent labour. The conditions of their existence are therefore unnatural. They no longer carry on the struggle for existence in comparatively normal relations in which each one can by his own ability make good his position whether against Nature or against the competition of his fellows, but they see themselves compelled to combine together and create a force which can extort for itself better living conditions. They acquire thereby the mentality of unfree men, in which ideals of civilization can no longer be contemplated in the needful purity, but become distorted to correspond with the surrounding atmosphere of struggle.