represents great conveniences as well. With such important advantages 
this conception has also an essential defect: it is false, and moreover, 
obviously, tangibly false. The fundamental error lies therein that the feli- 
citous existence of each given society is accepted, according to this inter- 
pretation of history, as being a matter of course, a gift from God, needing 
no explanations; whereas the shock, the breaking of the thread spun out 
of itself, as requiring an explanation by circumstances that ruin society. 
But, he who does not know how society hangs together, will not be able 
to understand its decay; as a man would stand in wonder before a crum- 
bling wall, in case he does not know that it had been kept standing for 
a length of time by its own weight. Human society is more com-~ 
plicated, and, chiefly, less stable than any wall, than any building, than 
any complex devised by human hands. Thousands upon thousands of people, 
families, groups and their combinations, form society. Each individual, 
in himself, each group, sub-group, group of groups, is or can become 
the centre of special interests, demands, wishes and powers of attraction. 
These innumerable powers of attraction can meet, can conjoin and hold 
mankind together, but can also diverge at various angles and tear society 
into shreds. Even more important than the actual interests are the imaginary 
ones. Man is constantly being haunted by phantoms; in prosperity and 
sufficiency, in the brilliant light of the sun and electric lamps, as well 
as in poverty and misery, in dark caves in the interior of primeval forests; 
there is only a change in the aspect of the bad or good genii, who persecute 
or protect him. If in enlightened times imaginary perpetrators of good 
and evil are sought and found among human beings themselves, this only 
renders society less stable. With thousands of actual divergencies, thousands 
of imaginary ones become associated, the effect of which is, however, 
absolutely real. The power of decay, of rupture by phantoms, is even 
more terrible than the actual divergence of society, more especially because 
its source is phantom-like, non-commensurate with the world of reality, 
cannot be removed by the means of actual life, and therefore cannot be 
removed at all. And as the society in question, its given structure, its existing 
co-relations and connections in it — is only one of the innumerable com- 
binations of which one can think idly, dream idly, rave idly, the probability 
of stableness of any given society at any given moment is not great, the 
probability of decay, however, very great indeed. After the decay, or even 
during the very process of if, the reconstruction will begin, for “man 1s a 
sociable being”; but after the reconstruction a decay will again follow, for 
the real, and especially the imaginary divergence are permanently existing 
and produce their effect without cessation. Decay — reconstruction — 
decay is therefore a natural process in the life of human societies. an ex- 
treme instability is their natural state.