d pair in the
Ark but the whole race, criminals and harlots, fools, beggars and
cripples. We ourselves have cast down Authority, and there will be a
crush, and many things will look very different from what the sages
would wish and what the romantics dream. And if it is going to be hell
for people like you and me, we must only accept it in the name of
justice, and think of Dante's terrible inscription: "I was made by the
Might of God, by the supreme Wisdom and by the primal Love."[16]

But is it hell? That depends on ourselves.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 15: In 1913 all Germany was celebrating with great pomp and
warlike display the centenary of the liberation of the country from
Napoleon, and also paying a huge property tax for the coming war.]

[Footnote 16:

_Fecemi la divina Potestate
La somma Sapienza e il primo Amore._

This is part of the inscription over the gates of Hell in the
_Inferno_, Canto III.]

VIII

Our description of the future order of society was tacitly based on
the assumption that our mentality, our ethics, our spiritual outlook,
would remain as they are at present.

This assumption is a probable one, but it is not irrevocably certain.
What we have endeavoured to demonstrate is simply the obvious
fact--the fact which our once so rigid but, since November, 1918,
uprooted and flaccid intellectualism has forgotten--that our salvation
is not to be found in any kind of mechanical apparatus or
institutions. Institutions do not mean evolution. If institutions run
too far ahead of evolution there will be reaction. When evolution runs
too far, there is revolution.

At this point both groups of our opponents will start up against us.

The Radicals cry: Ha! only give us food, give "all power to the
Soviets," let us have free-thought lectures, and mentality, insight,
experience and culture will come of themselves.

The Reactionaries smile: Ho! this man has never learned that there is
no such thing as evolution; that human character never changes.

I shall not answer either of these. They know, both of them, that they
are saying what is not true.

Something of unprecedented greatness can and must take place;
something that in the life of a people corresponds to the awakening of
manhood in the individual.

In every conscious existence there comes a moment when the living
being is no longer determined but begins to determine himself; when he
takes over responsibility from the surrounding