Can one hope to master the tangled intricacies of public affairs, if one brings to them a mode of thought altogether remote from life? This question is not one likely to find general favour; for it involves the admission that one's way of thought is remote from life. Yet, until this admission is made, it is not possible to approach the other question--the social one. For the remoteness of thought from life is a question of grave concern for the whole modern civilised world; and only when people treat it as such will they see light as to what is needed for social life. This question brings us to the consideration of the form taken by modern spiritual life. Modern man has evolved a spiritual life, which is to a very great degree dependent on state institutions and on economic forces. The human being is brought whilst still a child under the education and instruction of the state; and he can be educated only in the way permitted by the industrial and economic conditions of the environment from which he springs. It might easily be supposed, that this would ensure a person's being well qualified for the conditions of life at the present day, for that the state must possess every opportunity of arranging the whole system of education and instruction (which constitutes the essential part of public spiritual life) in the best interests of the human community. It might well be supposed too, that the way to make a person the best possible member of the human community is to educate him in accordance with the economic opportunities of the environment from which he comes, and then pass him on, thus educated, to fill one of the openings that these opportunities afford him.--It devolves upon this book,--an unpopular task to-day,--to shew, that the chaotic condition of our public life, comes from the spiritual life's dependence on the State and on industrial economy--and to shew further, that one part of the burning social question is the emancipation of spiritual life from this dependence. This involves attacking very widespread errors. That the State should take over the whole system of education, has long been regarded as a beneficial step in human progress; and persons of a socialistic turn of mind find it difficult to conceive of anything else, than that society should educate the individual to its service according to its own standards. People are loathe to recognise, what nevertheless, in this field, it is absolutely necessary should be recognised; namely, that in the process of man's historic evolution a thing, that at an earlier period was all right, may at a later period become all wrong. In order that a new age might come about in human affairs, it was necessary that the whole system of education, and with it public spiritual life, should be removed from those circles that had exclusive possession of it all through the middle ages, and entrusted to the State. But to continue to maintain this state of things, is a grave social mistake.