the Kurd is afraid of the sand-storm in summer, of the snow-storm in winter, which blight the feeding-place for his flocks; a flood or drought in Russia may rob the peasant of his harvest and expose him to starvation. But what constitutes the specific uncertainty of the proletariat, which expresses itself in the loss of wage and work, is this, that this uncertainty is understood as a result not of the natural causes of which I have spoken, but of the specific form of organisation of economic life--that is the chief point. "Against nature no man can assert a right; but in the constitution of society lack becomes immediately a form of injustice done to one or another class"--(Hegel). Further, this uncertainty as to matters of nature leads to superstition or bigotry; but this social uncertainty, if I may so express it, develops a sharpening and refinement of judgment. Man seeks after the causes which lead to this uncertainty. It works simply an increase of that feeling of resistance which grows up in the masses; it permits hate and envy to rise threateningly. Here, then, is the ground on which the revolutionary passions, hate, envy, insubordination, grow in the modern proletariat: peculiar forms of misery, the contrast of this wretchedness with the glitter of the bread-masters, the uncertainty of existence, supposed to arise out of the forms of organisation of economic life. In order now to be able to understand how these growths have pressed forward into the peculiar manifestations which characterise the modern social movement, we must realise that the masses which we have learned to know in the position thus described have been developed as if by magic, have not slowly grown into this condition. It is as if earlier history had been completely effaced for millions of men. For, as the presupposition of capitalism is combination in large operations, there is involved in this also the accumulation of masses of men in cities and centres of industry. This massing, however, means nothing other than this, that completely incoherent, amorphous crowds of men out of the most widely separated regions of the land are thrown together at one point, and that upon them the demand is made "Live!" This involves a complete break with the past, a tearing apart of all ties of home, village, family, custom. It means as well the overthrow of all the earlier ideals of these homeless, possessionless, and coherentless masses. This is a matter which is often underestimated. We forget that it is an entirely new life which the hordes of the modern proletariat have to begin. But what kind of a life is it? In its characteristics I find as many points of explanation for the positive construction of the proletarian world of ideas as for the destruction of all that has heretofore been dear and precious to man. I mean, the socialistic ideals of communal life and work must of necessity spring out of the industrial centres and the resorts of the working-men in the great cities.