ABSTRACT
The characteristic sacred ness with which the human being is now invested... is not inherent. Analyze man as he appears to empirical analysis and nothing will be found that suggests this sanctity, man is a temporal being. But.. . the human being is becoming the pivot of social consciousness among European peoples and has acquired an incomparable value. It is society that has consecrated him. Man has no innate right to this aura that surrounds and protects him against sacrilegtous trespass. It is merely the way in which society thinks of him, the high esteem that it has of him at the moment, projected and objectified. Thus very far from there being the antagonism between the individual and society which is often claimed, moral individualism, the cult of the individual, is in fact the product of society itself. It is society that instituted it and made of man the god whose servant it is.1
