PREFACE 
“ESTERN civilization has reached a crisis. It can- 
not survive in its present form. But if it is to sur- 
vive at all, man must find a solution for the urgent 
problems of internal and external relations. If the social 
forces which at present are spending themselves in ruthless 
conflict remain unchecked, there is nothing ahead but utter 
destruction. 
Society, the great superindividual structure of man’s 
own making, has become so large, so intricate, so complex, 
so independent of its maker that it threatens to overwhelm 
him and to make him the victim of his own creation. Forces 
beyond his control drive man to national and civil wars. 
Powers that he only vaguely comprehends draw him into 
conflicts that must end in self-destruction. 
Man cannot continue to trust blindly in social progress 
as he once trusted in a benevolent Providence. He has to 
control these forces or become further enslaved by them. 
He has to obtain a mastery over his social structure compa- 
rable to his mastery over nature, or his civilization will per- 
ish in suffering and bloodshed. 
The eighteenth century gave us an ideal, namely, indi- 
vidual liberty. The nineteenth century brought political 
liberation, democracy. But democracy did not bring indi- 
vidual liberty. It gave us the possibility of opposing per- 
sonal oppression, but it did not free us from the impersonal 
social forces. We are still the slaves of the great leviathan. 
Our knowledge and control of social life has never kept 
pace with its growing complexity, and we are farther be- 
hind than ever before. The liberation of the individual is