This inner inconsistency of socialistic culture, its remaining bound up with something which inwardly it contradicts, is most plainly shown by the historical experience of the Modern Age. Men were at first led to take up the movements towards the strengthening of society chiefly by the expectation that the invisible forces in human existence would be invigorated, and by the hope that the inner life of men would be raised. The more they have cut themselves adrift from these invisible connections and have placed themselves simply on the basis of experience the more have they lost in spiritual content. The movement towards the modern free State arose in association with religious strivings; the desire for political independence attached itself to and inwardly grew from the longing for more complete equality before God. The more this relation to Religion and, further, to an invisible realm receded into the background, the more difficult did it become to guard the striving for freedom from being diverted in the interests of individuals, classes, and parties; the more did the movement inwardly lose by external expansion. We saw that the idea of nationality acquired power from the conviction that there results in an independent people an individualisation of the spiritual and divine which is the first thing to ensure to existence a definite character and a firm support. So long as this conviction predominated, each people had a great inner task in reaching the highest point of development of its nature, and, what is more important, did not need to direct its energies upon externals. With the obscuring or the complete surrender of this spiritual foundation, a blind adoration of one's own country, an increase of unfruitful pride of race, a passionate struggle for external expansion and power, inevitably accompanied by the surrender of humanity and justice, threatens us.