Not in what capitalism and the machine have implanted in the worker's consciousness, not here lie the ideas and will-forces, that give its character to the present social movement. This movement turned in the direction of modern science to find its fount of thought, because capitalism and the machine could give the worker no substance with which to content his soul as a human being. Such substance and content was afforded to the medieval craftsman by his craft. In the kind of connection which the medieval handworker felt between himself, as a human being, and his craft, there was something that shewed life within the whole human confraternity in a light which made it seem, for his individual consciousness, worth living. Whatever he might be doing, he was able to regard it in such a way, that he seemed through it to be realising what he desired, as a "man," to be. Tending a machine under the capitalist scheme of things the man was thrown back upon himself, upon his own inner life, whenever he tried to find some principle on which to base a general outlook on Man and one's consciousness of what as a "man" one is. Technical industry, capitalism,--these could contribute nothing towards such an outlook. And so it came to pass, that the working-class consciousness took the bent towards the scientific type of thought. The direct human link with actual life was lost. Now this occurred just at a time, when the leading classes of mankind were working towards a scientific mode of thought, which in itself no longer possessed the spiritual energy to content man's consciousness in every aspect and guide it along all the directions of its wants. The old views of the universe gave man his place as a soul in the spiritual complex of existence. Modern science views him as a natural object amidst a purely natural order of things. This science is not felt as a stream flowing from a spiritual world into the soul of man, and on which man as a soul is buoyed and upborne. Whatever one's opinion may be as to the relation of the religious impulses, and kindred things, to the scientific mode of thought of recent times, yet one must admit, if one considers historic evolution impartially, that the scientific conception has developed out of the religious one. But the old conceptions of the universe, that rested deep down on religious foundations, lacked power to impart their soul-bearing force to the newer form of scientific conception. They withdrew beyond its range, and lived on, contenting their consciousness with things in which the souls of the workers could find no resource. For the leading classes, this inner world of consciousness might still have a certain value. In some form or other it was bound up with their own position in life. They sought for no new substance for their consciousness, because they were able to keep a hold on the old one, that had been handed down to them through actual life. But the modern worker was torn out of all his old setting in life.