One of the chief characteristics of our time is the growing supremacy of quantity over quality. The latter is being ousted by the former in politics, in culture, in all departments of our civilisation. This struggle can, of course, have various disguises, and it can take place on several planes. Even the most conspicuous mass-movement may not necessarily be directed by quantitative valuations; or it may be first prompted by higher impulses and only later adopt a purely quantitative tendency. And a growing tendency of this kind is noticeable in the whole of modern ‘egalitarian’ democracy. This does not mean that democracy is altogether devoid of ideals, but that its ideals—provided there still be any—are on the wrong plane : on the plane of mere economic factors and of class-struggle, which not only conceal but invariably distort all deeper (ethical and spiritual) considerations. Its ultimate vision is not so much a dignified but a comfortable life : not the complete Christian Man, but the standardised Universal Bourgeois ruthlessly controlled by his equally standardised ‘comrades.’

There is, of course, nothing easier or more seductive than reducing everything to ‘economic factors.’ Moreover it has the virtue of simplifying all problems to such an extent as to explain the whole mystery of life in a sixpenny pamphlet which everyone can carry in his pocket. But a valuation of life as a whole under the auspices of economic factors alone puts the cart before the horse : it makes both life and mankind only an appendage to economics.