Master: Now supposing you didn’t mind being punished rather than keep still, could you start singing or jumping about just to be funny? Pupil: Well, no, not even if I did not mind being sent out, I couldn’t. Master: Do you know why? Pupil: Because I should spoil your teaching and their learning. Master: And you would destroy the school. In such a discussion, which may occupy several days or weeks, the child has obviously learnt some rules of life derived from highly speculative notions. The reality of any relation depends on two acts directed towards a common aim; therefore, the rights of the two parties are dependent upon their actual efficiency in the pursuit of the common aim. A master who does not teach must be dismissed; a pupil who does not learn loses the right of being a pupil. Similarly, if a landowner allows the ground to lie waste, he is not discharging his duties as a landowner and his rights to his property are not actual. This stands in complete contrast with the “Rights of Man” which could assert man’s liberty to use his property as he chose, the state only calling upon its citizens to pay taxes—and fight in war, because the state was understood as something external to the citizens. The relation between employer and employed is clearly parallel to that between master and pupil; in it the common aim is to realise as much profit as possible out of the enterprise. As soon as one of the parties diminishes the productivity of the enterprise, he forfeits his right to damage himself, the other party and the commonwealth. The state, though having no direct shares in the profit is enriched or impoverished according to the increased or decreased productivity of private enterprises. In this is stated for the first time since Christ preached and lived the Gospel, the true equality of men that had been asserted in it. So thoroughly does Christianity realise that rights are correlative to duties, that before spiritual citizenship can be bestowed on a child in most Christian churches sponsors are required to take a pledge in its name, and upon its coming to adult state the young Christian must confirm that pledge and acknowledge the duties on which its rights depend.[10] This is the reason why the Roman Catholic Church is at once democratic and hierarchical. A shepherd can become Pope, an Emperor can be deprived of his spiritual citizenship. The view of citizenship as a birthright is a relic of Paganism when slavery might be the predestined fate of some and citizenship of others. Political reality finally becomes spiritual reality; man is a citizen exactly in so far as he realises the state, through the act of consciousness by which, transcending the empirical element in his own will, he postulates such a will in religious objectivity, thereby making it law.