THE WONDERS OF LIFE 



tion to the gentle doctrine of Christian charity which it 

 employs its priests to preach every Sunday with all 

 solemnity. 



The chief task of the modern state is to bring about 

 a natural harmony between the social and the personal 

 estimate of human life. For this purpose we need, 

 above all, a thorough reform of education, the adminis- 

 tration of justice, and the social organization. Only 

 then can we get rid of that mediaeval barbarism of which 

 Wallace speaks ; to-day it finds expression triumphantly 

 in our penal laws, our caste-privileges, the scholastic 

 nature of our education, and the despotism of the 

 Church. 



For each individual organism the life of the individual 

 is the first aim and the standard of value. On this rests 

 the universal struggle for self-maintenance, which can 

 be reduced in the inorganic world to the physical law of 

 inertia. To this subjective estimate of life is opposed 

 the objective, which proceeds on the value of the indi- 

 vidual to the outer world. This objective value increases 

 as the organism develops and presses into the general 

 stream of life. The chief of these relations are those 

 that come of the division of labor among individuals 

 and their association in higher groups. This is equally 

 true of the cell-states which we call tissues and persons, 

 of the higher stocks of plants and animals, and of the 

 herds and communities of the higher animals and men. 

 The more these develop by progressive division of labor 

 and the greater the mutual need of the differentiated 

 individuals, so much the higher rises the objective value 

 of the life of the latter for the whole, and so much the 

 lower sinks the subjective value of the individual. Hence 

 arises a constant struggle between the interests of in- 

 dividuals who follow their special life-aim and those of 

 the state, for which they have no value except as parts 

 of the whole. 



410 



