The standpoints of the social theorist and of him who deals practically in social life are entirely different; but men constantly interchange the two. For the theorist, social development is a necessary sequence of cause and effect, as he sees it in the shaping of life compulsorily by the motives of the persons involved; and these motives themselves he tries to understand in their limitations. For him social life is a process rather of the past. But for the man who deals practically in social life, it lies in the future. What the theorist understands as the working of specified causes is, to the practical man, an object lying in the future which his will should help to accomplish. This very will is a necessary element in the causation of social happening. And this will, conditioned as it may be, is the highest personal possession of man in action. As the social theorist seeks to show as necessary specific tendencies of the will, and with them specific developments of the social life, he can do this with the self-evident limitation that the energy of the practical man in creating and accomplishing these efforts of the will does not fail. If for any reason, for example through the pressure of quietistic sentiment, this energy should be lessened, the most important link in the assumed chain of causes would drop out, and the development would take an entirely different course. It is a great mistake to apply unqualifiedly to social life the idea of a process in accordance with natural law; for example, to say that socialism must come by a "necessity of nature." Socialism has nothing to do with any such necessity. Thus, for example, we cannot see why the development of capitalism should not lead just as well to the overthrow of modern culture. And it must surely take this course if the leaders of advance do not develop during the transformation of the social life the necessary qualities for a new order of society, if they allow themselves to sink into a marasmus or quietism. For them, all social happening is only a condition to be created: and in order to accomplish this in the future they need an energy of resolution.