accordance with the law of spiritual growth which has so long been thwarted and perverted by the usages of society. I have given only a general idea of what economic freedom would do to promote human happiness. Its effect upon the lives and characters of men would be quite as emancipating as upon those of women; but this I have not space to consider in detail. In passing, however, I might remark that not the least of the benefits that men would gain by it would be relief from the worry and humiliation which the support of women so often involves at present. “I have taken mistreatment from that conductor,” said a young musician recently, “that I never would have stood for if I were single. But I have a wife, and that makes us all cowards.” A free people would outgrow on the one hand the sheepishness that fear of want begets, and on the other the arrogance bred by consciousness of power. Men would no longer need endure humiliation for the sake of keeping their jobs; and those over them would be estopped from arrogance by the knowledge that they were dealing with free men who were under no compulsion to tolerate it. If it appear that I envisage utopian results from the institution of economic freedom, let me assume the possibility that those spiritual results which I foresee might not come about. If they did not come about, however, their failure to do so would imply a profound and inexplicable change for the worse in human nature; for if the world’s history proves anything, it is that there is in mankind a natural disposition to aspire toward what is ennobling and beautiful, and that this disposition is favoured by economic security--especially where it is not associated with irresponsible power--and thwarted by involuntary poverty. Why is it that the middle classes are regarded as the “backbone” of society, if not because they have had enough command of wealth to enable the maintenance of health and a high standard of education, without that excess and power which too often breed idleness and arrogance? Leisure and abundance stimulate independence of spirit, thought, education, creative activity. Penury leads to demoralization, ignorance, dulness. This has been the world’s experience in the past. “There is in man,” says Goethe, “a creative disposition which comes into activity as soon as his existence is assured. _As soon as he has nothing to worry about or to fear_, this semi-divinity in him, working effectively in his spiritual peace and assurance, grasps materials into which to breathe its own spirit.” Why should one assume that this spirit will pass over the material offered by life itself and the relations of human beings with one another? It has not done so in the past. Throughout mankind’s long martyrdom of exploitation, through all the struggling and hatred engendered thereby, this semi-divinity in man has been leading him towards a more humane conception of life. The spiritual peace and assurance resulting from economic justice would