ABSTRACT
there are only two opposing political attitudes, the liberal and the authoritarian, however the power may be defined in which authority is placed—in autocracy, theocracy, or communism (at least in its marxist and undemocratic form). The difference between the two attitudes is not that one excludes all liberty and the other all authority, which would be absurd; but simply that each lays a superior emphasis on a different principle. Neither side can deny the fact that both principles are necessary for human life; they can only understand, and therefore estimate, them differently. Liberalism has been called idealist and authoritarianism materialist, but, even if we accept this way of speaking, we find that idealism does not deny the conception of matter nor materialism that of spirit; their difference resides merely in their interpretation of the two elements of reality. Materialism sets out to deduce minds, ideas, thoughts and morality from matter; idealism, on the other hand, to deduce so-called matter from spirit, as being one of the instruments which the latter fashions, or one of its internal contradictions.
