In the tenement-houses, the huge manufactories, the public houses for meetings and for pleasures, the individual proletarian, as if forsaken by God and man, finds himself with his companions in misery again together, as members of a new and gigantic organism. Here are new societies forming, and these new communities bear the communistic stamp, because of modern methods of work. And they develop, grow, establish themselves in the mass of men, in proportion as the charm of separate existence fades from the individual; the more dreary the attic room in the suburb of the city, the more attractive is the new social centre in which the outcast finds himself again treated as a man. The individual disappears, the companion emerges. A uniform class consciousness matures itself, also the habit of communal work and pleasure. So much for the psychology of the proletariat. In order now to gain a full understanding of the modern social movement, let us look at its general time environment. Also here merely a remark or two must suffice. Perhaps this phrase will sufficiently describe the modern period: there is in it conspicuously an exuberance of life, as I think in no earlier period. A stream of vigorous life flows through modern society as at no earlier time; and for this reason a quickness of contact between all the individual members of a society is made possible now as never heretofore. This has been accomplished by the modern means of transportation which capitalism has created for us. The possibility in these days of informing oneself in a few hours concerning the occurrences throughout a great country by means of telegraph, telephone, newspaper, and the possibility of throwing great masses of men from one place to another by modern means of transportation, have produced a condition of solidarity throughout great groups of men, a sense of omnipresence, which was unknown in all earlier times. Particularly is this true in the large cities of these days. The ease of movement of masses has grown enormously. And in like manner has that grown which we are accustomed to call education--knowledge, and with knowledge demands. With this vigour of life, however, is most closely united that which I would call the nervosity of modern times, an unsteadiness, haste, insecurity of existence. Because of the distinctive character of economic relations, this trace of unrest and haste has forced itself into all branches not only of economic but as well of social life. The age of free competition has stamped itself upon all spheres of life. Every man strives with others, no one feels himself sure, no one is contented with his condition. The beauty and calm of rest are gone.