CIVILIZATION— WARD AND DIETZGEN 185 



Dietzgen, like Ward, sees that the great 

 problem which confronts the race is to break 

 down those intolerable bars which prevent 

 humanity from entering into its just inherit- 

 ance. 



To this great and culminating task man 

 must bend all the powers of his mind. Now 

 he has reached the point where the gates of 

 liberty begin to yield and with one grand, 

 united effort may be thrown wide open so 

 that all the sons and daughters of men may 

 finish the long centuries of misery and freely 

 enter in. 



To continue this senseless oppression longer 

 would be the summit of stupidity. 



"Consider the frugal needs of our people 

 and at the same time the fertility of labor, 

 and ask yourselves if mere instinct alone 

 would not be sufficient to teach us how to 

 supply adequately our needs with the help of 

 the existing means of production?" 



To make these "means of production the 

 property of society" is then the problem of 

 Ward's applied sociology and Dietzgen's so- 

 cial democracy alike. According to both, this 

 emancipation of the mass of the people from 

 the last form of slavery is the one consuming 

 task of civilization. 



And the psychic factor, the consciously rea- 



