production of man, but also a means to secure the permanence of man when once he has been produced. It follows, therefore, that all the millions of men “who cannot picture the Idea in their souls” cannot be void of purpose, like the spoilt creations of the artist, which, not being suited to their object, are left lying about until they perish of themselves. There must of necessity be some advantage in their existence, as in that of the other kinds of created things. What, then, is this advantage? The answer is implied in the question. “Potential man,” like other earthly things, exists without doubt for the benefit of the “perfect being,” of “actual man.” In conformity with this view Maimonides lays it down that “these men exist for two reasons. First, to serve the one man (the ‘perfect’): for man has many wants, and Methuselah’s life were not long enough to learn all the crafts whereof a man has absolute need for his living: and when should he find leisure to learn and to acquire wisdom? The rest of mankind, therefore, exists to set right those things that are necessary to them in the commonwealth, to the end that the Wise Man may find his needs provided for and that wisdom may spread. And secondly, the man without wisdom exists because the Wise are very few, and therefore the masses were created to make a society for the Wise, that they be not lonely.”[114] Thus the existence of the majority of mankind has a purpose of its own, which is different from that of the existence of the chosen minority. This minority is an end in itself—it is the embodiment of the most perfect form in the inferior world; whereas the purpose of the majority lies not in its own existence, but in the fact that it creates the conditions necessary to the existence of the minority: it creates, that is, human society with all its cultural possessions (in the material sense), without which it is impossible that wisdom should spread. Thus we have introduced into ethics a new element—the social element.