the conjecture, contrary to common sense and experience, were possible, that power having abolished power could give people the freedom necessary to establish those conditions of life which they regard as most advantageous for themselves, then there would be no reason whatever to suppose that people living an egotistical life could establish amongst themselves better conditions than the previous ones.
Let the Queen of the Dahomeys establish the most Liberal constitution, and let her even realise that nationalisation of the instruments of labor which, in the opinion of the Socialists, would save people from all their calamities—it would still be necessary for someone to have power in order that the constitution should work and the instruments of labor should not be seized into private hands. But as long as these people are Dahomeys, with their life-conception, it is evident that—although in another form—the violence of a certain portion of the Dahomeys over the others will be the same as without a constitution and without the nationalisation of the instruments of labor. Before realising the Socialistic organisation it would be necessary for the Dahomeys to lose their taste for bloody tyranny. Just the same is necessary for Europeans also.
In order that men may live a common life without oppressing each other, there is necessary, not an organisation supported by force, but a moral state in accordance with, which people, from their inner convictions and not by coercion, should act towards others as they desire that others should act towards them. Such people do exist. They exist in religious Christian communities in America, in Russia, in Canada. Such people do indeed, without laws supported by force, live the communal life without oppressing each other.
Thus the rational activity proper to our time for men of our Christian society is only one: the profession and preaching by word and deed of the last and highest religious teaching known to us, of the Christian teaching; not of that Christian teaching which, whilst submitting to the existing order of life, demands of men only the fulfillment of external ritual, or is satisfied with faith in and the preaching of salvation through redemption, but of that vital Christianity the in-
