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Most of mankind, now as in the past, close their eyes to this possibility. They seek to put off their responsibility on to the shoulders of various abstractions which they think can bear their burden well enough if only they are spelt with a capital letter:—Fate—God—Nature—Law—Eternal Justice—and such like. Men are educated to be self-reliant and enterprising in the details of life, but dependent, unreflective, laissez-faire about life itself. The idea that the basis of living could be really and radically altered is outside most people’s orbit; and if it is forced upon their notice, they as often as not find it in some way immoral.

Closely connected with this, in a sense its corollary, we have the fact that ninety-nine people out of a hundred are concerned with getting a living rather than with living, and that if for any reason they are liberated from this necessity, they generally have not the remotest idea how to employ their time with either pleasure or profit to themselves or to others.