But we are dealing in this volume rather with changes of thought than with the actual life of the times.  Theories affecting the organization of work, the distribution of the product, and the government of society have had much to do with our present difficulties.  They have arisen from the conditions of the industrial revolution and the doctrines of the political revolution which began about the same time, and they have reacted ever since on the work and wages, the life and government of the mass of Western men.  They are discussed in our eighth chapter.  It may be said broadly that in this sphere, as in philosophy, the old and simpliste doctrines have been criticized almost to the point of extinction, but that no new all-embracing practical synthesis has taken their place.  The Marxian theory that social evolution has been due mainly to economic causes, that these have produced inevitably the present—­or recent—­capitalist system, which inevitably must be turned upside down in the interests of manual labour—­this is no longer dominant in any Western community, though it is fighting a desperate battle in Eastern Europe.  But it is equally true that the capitalist system, presented in an ideal and moralized form in the Utopias of St. Simon and Comte, is not generally accepted now as an ideal for industry.  The spirit which Comte desired and believed would animate the moralized employer, acting as the providence of his workpeople, we look to find rather in a reconstituted and moralized State.  We all share this hope in our degree, The Times as well as the Daily News, and we do not expect the new spirit to operate simply through the free-will and private capacity and initiative of individuals.  The joint stock company has settled that.

What we are waiting and hoping for is the time when, under the aegis of a benevolent State, capital and labour may live together in many mansions and, like the monks of old, follow many rules of life.  In this region our ideal of unity is more diversified than in the realm of thought, and there is no demand for a Descartes.

And here it is interesting to note that one of the most telling books on social reconstruction published since the war is by an international writer.  This is Dr. Walther Rathenau, a German of Jewish descent, whose ideas have just been popularized by a Frenchman, M. Gaston Raphael[1].  He fits in well with our general argument by virtue of his double attitude, holding, on the one hand, that under the general supervision of the State, industry should be organized in various self-governing groups, ‘Social Guilds’ or ‘professional syndicates’ in which both employers and workmen would be included with representatives of the Government; while, on the other hand, he is emphatic that progress must proceed from a changed and widening mentality, and aim in turn at increasing the depth and capacity of the individual soul.