rtheless, as a foundation the case must be stated, and
as a necessary preparation to any work that looks forward we must have
at least a working hypothesis as to how the conditions that need
redemption were brought about. I state the case thus, therefore: That
human society, even humanity itself, is now in a state of flux that at
any moment may change into a chaos comparable only with that which came
with the fall of classical civilization and from which five centuries
were necessary for the process of recovery. Christianity, democracy,
science, education, wealth, and the cumulative inheritance of a thousand
years, have not preserved us from the vain repetition of history. How
has this been possible, what has been the sequence of events that has
brought us to this pass?

It is of course the result of the interaction of certain physical,
material facts and certain spiritual forces. Out of these spiritual
energies come events, phenomena that manifest themselves in political,
social, ecclesiastical transactions and institutions; in wars,
migrations and the reshaping of states; in codes of law, the
organization of society, the development of art, literature and science.
In their turn all these concrete products work on the minds and souls of
men, modifying old spiritual impulses either by exaltation or
degradation, bringing new ones into play; and again these react on the
material fabric of human life, causing new combinations, unloosing new
forces, that in their turn play their part in the eternal process of
building, unbuilding and rebuilding our unstable and fluctuant world.

Underlying all the varied material forms of ancient society, as this
developed around the shores of the Mediterranean, was the great fact of
slavery: Persia, Assyria, Babylonia, Egypt, Greece, Rome, all were
small, sometimes very small, minorities of highly developed, highly
privileged individuals existing on a great sub-stratum of slaves. All
the vast contributions of antiquity in government and law, in science,
letters, art and philosophy, all the building of the culture and
civilization that still remain the foundation stones of human society,
was the work of the few free subsisting on the many un-free. But
freedom, liberty, is an attribute of the soul and it may exist even when
the body is in bondage. The slaves of antiquity were free neither in
body nor in soul, but with the coming of Christianity all this was
changed, for it is one of the gre