ABSTRACT
Material life is merely a means for the maintenance of spiritual life: it should never be taken as substitute for the object which it serves. In European nations to-day, the tendency is to regard life solely as material development, with the result that, no matter how plausible the contrivances, the malady only becomes worse. Since we do not believe in the absolutely virtuous nature of individual men, naturally we cannot concede that their aggregate life in society can be good without regulation. No individual can exist without responding to the influence and restrictions of the social force, just as no society can exist which does not depend upon the action and interaction of the individuals within it. The mechanical way by which Motze and the Legalists would have every man conform to the same standard, immersing every bit of the individual in society as a whole, seems to us most unreasonable.
