because, all unperceived it is being dissevered from commonplace practice and from all direct contact with life. How many people there are to-day, who, from a certain ethical or religious distinction of mind, have all the will to live on a right footing with their fellow-men, who desire to act by others only in the best conceivable way, and yet fall short of the kind of feeling that would enable them to do so, because they cannot lay hold upon any social conception that finds its outlet in practical habits of life! It is people such as these, who, at this epoch-making moment in the world's history when social questions have become so urgent, are blocking the road to a true practice of life. They reckon themselves very practical persons, and all the time are visionary obstructionists. One can hear them making speeches like this: "What is really needed, is for people to rise above all this materialism, this external material life which drove us into the disaster of the great war and into all this misery. They must turn to a spiritual conception of life." And to illustrate man's path to spirituality, they are forever harping upon great men of byegone days, who were venerated for their conversion to a spiritual way of thinking. One finds, however, that directly one tries to bring the talk round to the very thing that the spirit has to do for real practical life, and what is so urgently required of the spirit to-day: the creation of daily bread, one is at once reminded, that the first thing, after all, is to bring people again to acknowledge the spirit. At this moment however, the urgent thing is, to employ the powers of the spiritual life to discover the right principles of social health. And for this it is not enough that men should make a hobby of the spirit, as a bye-path in life. Everyday existence needs to be brought into line with the spirit. It was this taste for turning spiritual life into bye-paths, that led the late ruling classes to find their pleasure in social conditions that ended in the present state of affairs.