is true,
not only of workmen, but of all classes in a society which conducts its
affairs on the principle that wealth, instead of being proportioned to
function, belongs to those who can get it. They are never satisfied,
nor can they be satisfied. For as long as they make that principle the
guide of their individual lives and of their social order, nothing
short of infinity could bring them satisfaction.

So here, again, the prevalent insistence upon rights, and prevalent
neglect of functions, brings men into a vicious circle which they
cannot escape, without escaping from the false philosophy which
dominates them. But it does something more. It makes that philosophy
itself seem plausible and exhilarating, and a rule not only for
industry, in which it had its birth, but for politics and culture and
religion and the whole compass of social life. The possibility that
one aspect of human life may be so exaggerated as to overshadow, {44}
and in time to atrophy, every other, has been made familiar to
Englishmen by the example of "Prussian militarism." Militarism is the
characteristic, not of an army, but of a society. Its essence is not
any particular quality or scale of military preparation, but a state of
mind, which, in its concentration on one particular element in social
life, ends finally by exalting it until it becomes the arbiter of all
the rest. The purpose for which military forces exist is forgotten.
They are thought to stand by their own right and to need no
justification. Instead of being regarded as an instrument which is
necessary in an imperfect world, they are elevated into an object of
superstitious veneration, as though the world would be a poor insipid
place without them, so that political institutions and social
arrangements and intellect and morality and religion are crushed into a
mold made to fit one activity, which in a sane society is a subordinate
activity, like the police, or the maintenance of prisons, or the
cleansing of sewers, but which in a militarist state is a kind of
mystical epitome of society itself.

Militarism, as Englishmen see plainly enough, is fetich worship. It is
the prostration of men's souls before, and the laceration of their
bodies to appease, an idol. What they do not see is that their
reverence for economic activity and industry and what is called
business is also fetich worship, and that in their devotion to that
idol they torture themselves as needlessly a