preached at by the
turn-coats of the second transformation, and to-morrow we shall be
smiled at by those of the third.

But it does not matter. The moving forces of our epoch do not come
from business offices nor from the street, the rostrum, the pulpit, or
the professorial chair. The noisy rush of yesterday, to-day and
to-morrow is only the furious motion of the outermost circle, the
centre moves upon its way, quietly as the stars.

We have in our survey to leap over several periods of forward and
backward movement and we shall earn the thanks of none of them. What
is too conservative for one will be too revolutionary for another, and
the aesthete will scornfully tell us that we have no fibre. When we
show that what awaits us is no fools' paradise, but the danger of a
temporary reverse of humanity and culture, then the facile Utopianist
will shout us down with his two parrot-phrases,[4] and when we, out of
a sense of duty, of harmony with the course of the world and
confidence in justice at the soul of things, tread the path of danger,
precipitous though it be, then we shall be scorned by all the
worshippers of Force and despisers of mankind.

But we for our part shall not pander either to the force-worshippers
or to the masses. We serve no powers that be. Our love goes out to the
People; but the People are not a crowd at a meeting, nor a sum-total
of interests, nor are they the newspapers or debating-clubs. The
People are the waking or sleeping, the leaking, frozen, choked, or
gushing well of the German spirit. It is with that spirit, in the
present and in the future, as it runs its course into the sea of
humanity, that we have here to do.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 3: The emblem of the Hohenzollerns.]

[Footnote 4: The reference, apparently, is to the argument that any
change must be for the better, and to the reliance on surplus value.
See pp. 13, 14.]

III

The criterion which we have indicated for the socialized society of
the future is a material one. But is the spiritual condition of an
epoch to be determined by material arrangements? Is this not a
confession of faith in materialism?

We are speaking of a criterion, not of a prime moving force. I have no
desire, however, to avoid going into the material, or rather we should
say mechanical, interpretation of history. I have done it more than
once in my larger works, and for the sake of coherence I may repeat it
in outline here.

The laws which