The recognition that we evidently have so little power over economic relations does not discourage us. We know this to be to a considerable extent a result of the fact that hitherto facts were contending with facts, and passions with passions. Our powerlessness comes from our feeling for reality. We shall be able to deal with things much more effectively, if we resolve to try to solve our problems by a change of spirit and temper. And we are at length ready for the recognition of this. The efforts for control which were made on the strength of economic theories and Utopias were in every respect failures, and have brought us into a terrible condition. There remains nothing for us to do but to try a radical change of policy, [pg 277] viz., the solution of our problems by means of a helpful understanding and confidence in a way that will prove effective. It is reverence for life alone which can create the spirit and temper needed for this. The understanding and confidence which we mutually accord to each other with a view to what is most purposive, and by means of which we obtain the utmost power that is possible over circumstances, can be enjoyed only if everyone can assume in everyone else reverence for the existence of the other and regard for his material and spiritual welfare as a spirit and temper which influences them to the depths of their being. Only through reverence for life can we attain the standards of economic justice, about which we have to come to an understanding with each other. Will it be possible to bring about this development? We must, if we are not to be ruined together, materially and spiritually. All progress in discovery and invention works itself out at last to a fatal result, if we do not maintain control over it through a corresponding progress in our spirituality. Through the power which we gain over the forces of nature we get in an inexplicable way as human beings control over other human beings. With the possession of a hundred machines a single man or a company is given a supremacy over all who work the machines. Some new invention makes it possible for one man by a single movement to kill not merely a hundred, but ten thousand of his fellow-men. In no sort of struggle is it possible to avoid becoming ruinous to one another by economic or physical power. At best the result is that the oppressor and the oppressed exchange rôles. The only thing that can help is that we renounce the power which is given us over one another. But that is something to be done by spirituality. Intoxicated by the progress in discovery and invention with which our age has been flooded, we forgot to trouble ourselves about men’s progress in spirituality. In the absence of all thought we slid without knowing it into [pg 278] pessimism, believing, that is, in all sorts of progress, but no longer in the spiritual progress of the individual and of mankind.