To a certain extent we have all of us, under modern conditions, become unfree men. In every rank of life we have from decade to decade, if not from year to year, to carry on a harder struggle for existence. Overwork, physical or mental or both, is our lot. We can no longer find time to collect and order our thoughts. Our spiritual dependence increases at the same pace as our material dependence. In every direction we come to conditions of dependence which in former times were never known in such universality and such strength. Economic, social, and political organizations, which are steadily becoming more and more complete, are getting us more and more into their power. The State with its more and more rigid organization holds us under a control which is growing more and more decided and inclusive. In every respect, therefore, our individual being is depreciated. It is becoming more and more difficult to be a personality. [pg 005] Thus it is that the progress of our external civilization brings with it the result that individuals, in spite of all the advantages they get, are in many respects injured both materially and spiritually in their capacity for civilization through those very advantages. It is our progress in material civilization, too, which intensifies in so disastrous a way our social and political problems. Through the social ones we are involved in a class struggle which shakes and throws into confusion economic and national relations. If we go down to rock-bottom, it was machinery and world commerce which brought about the world war, and the inventions which put into our hands such mighty power of destruction made the war of such a devastating character that conquered and conquerors alike are ruined for a period of which no one can see the end. It was also our technical achievements which put us in a position to kill at such a distance, and to wipe out the enemy in such masses, that we sank so low as to push aside any last impulse to humanity, and were mere blind wills which made use of perfected lethal weapons of such destructive capacity that we were unable to maintain the distinction between combatants and non-combatants.