Thought is the most responsible of all functions. He who thinks for others must look after them, and if they live he may not slay them. It is therefore a mischievous piece of romantic folly to point us to the past. We must all pass through the dark gateway, and the sage has no right to growl: Leave me out--I am the salt of the earth! The first thing we have to do is to save humanity; not a selected pair in the Ark but the whole race, criminals and harlots, fools, beggars and cripples. We ourselves have cast down Authority, and there will be a crush, and many things will look very different from what the sages would wish and what the romantics dream. And if it is going to be hell for people like you and me, we must only accept it in the name of justice, and think of Dante's terrible inscription: "I was made by the Might of God, by the supreme Wisdom and by the primal Love."[16] But is it hell? That depends on ourselves. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 15: In 1913 all Germany was celebrating with great pomp and warlike display the centenary of the liberation of the country from Napoleon, and also paying a huge property tax for the coming war.] [Footnote 16: _Fecemi la divina Potestate La somma Sapienza e il primo Amore._ This is part of the inscription over the gates of Hell in the _Inferno_, Canto III.] VIII Our description of the future order of society was tacitly based on the assumption that our mentality, our ethics, our spiritual outlook, would remain as they are at present. This assumption is a probable one, but it is not irrevocably certain. What we have endeavoured to demonstrate is simply the obvious fact--the fact which our once so rigid but, since November, 1918, uprooted and flaccid intellectualism has forgotten--that our salvation is not to be found in any kind of mechanical apparatus or institutions. Institutions do not mean evolution. If institutions run too far ahead of evolution there will be reaction. When evolution runs too far, there is revolution. At this point both groups of our opponents will start up against us. The Radicals cry: Ha! only give us food, give "all power to the Soviets," let us have free-thought lectures, and mentality, insight, experience and culture will come of themselves. The Reactionaries smile: Ho! this man has never learned that there is no such thing as evolution; that human character never changes. I shall not answer either of these. They know, both of them, that they are saying what is not true. Something of unprecedented greatness can and must take place; something that in the life of a people corresponds to the awakening of manhood in the individual.