We read in the New Testament--"Remember the words of the Lord Jesus how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive." (Acts, XX, 35.) Right giving, which results from an appreciation of the obligations of service, is an individualistic action; receiving, which means a benefit from the activity and initiative of someone else (and often irrespective of the real deserts of the recipient), is essentially Socialistic in tendency. The one causes a growth in individual character; the other tends to stunt or weaken it. St. Paul mentioned (1st Corinthians XIII, 3) as one of the greatest possible forms of service the bestowal of all one's goods to feed the poor. But he did not suggest as a better way that the individual should sit back, let the State take over his goods and attend to the feeding of the poor, and thus relieve him from responsibility. In fact, "love" itself, which is declared to be the greatest thing of all, is essentially an individual impulse and never could be called forth from the human heart, nor supplied to it either, by the fiat of a government. The same note runs through the Jewish Scriptures. At the beginning (Genesis, chap. IV), in the old story of Cain's murder of Abel, when Cain inquired of the Lord "Am I my brother's keeper?" the inference to be drawn most decidedly is that the Lord thought he was, and not the State, or the tribal government of that day, in his stead. Both the Christian and Jewish religions are essentially individualistic in appeal and social in responsibility, and so also is Democracy. May not the extreme brutality of the German soldier of to-day be the result not only of the ruthless command from the official higher up but also of the de-souling, materialistic influence of Socialism on the common people of Germany during the past twenty-five years? Is not the viciousness of Prussian militarism plus the demoralizing influence of Socialism a sufficient explanation? According to Mr. J. Dover Wilson, "the German nation, in fact, is suffering from some form of arrested development, and arrested development, as the criminologists tell us, is almost invariably accompanied by morbid psychology. That Germany at the present moment, and for some time past, has been the victim of a morbid state of mind, few impartial observers will deny. It has, however, not been so generally recognized that this disease--for it is nothing less--is due not to any national depravity but to constitutional and structural defects."[8]