ABSTRACT
For thousands of years most religions and philosophies have idealized suffering and poverty. Self-denial, poverty, indifference to nature and the social environment have been guiding ideals. An order of society that supplies a man only what is absolutely necessary for his existence is a system fit for beasts, not men. The ideas of the eighteenth-century rationalists and humanists had in them an explosive quality, and they were let loose in full force in 1776 and in 1789. Judaism tries to be true to a healthy rhythm of life- work and rest, affirmation and denial; the whole human being must be outer-oriented and inner-oriented, committed and suspended, involved and withdrawn. Judaism teaches self-denial for the sake of greater affirmation. Utilitarianism, democracy, and humanitarianism found in the new machines means for actualizing their ideals. The Industrial Revolution was hitched to the American and French revolutions to wipe out poverty, ignorance, slavery, class consciousness, and misery.
