Page:Socialism, Its Growth and Outcome - William Morris and Ernest Belfort Bax (1909).djvu/25

 Rh having for its supreme end (tacitly, if not avowedly), the material salvation of the individual in the commercial battle of this world. This is illustrated by a predominance amongst the commercial classes of a debased Calvinistic theology, termed Evangelicalism, which is the only form of religion these classes can understand—the poetico-mystical element in ±he earlier Christianity being eliminated therefrom, and the "natural laws" of profit and loss, and the devil take the hindmost, which dominate this carnal world, being as nearly as possible reproduced into the spiritual world of its conception.

It may surprise some to be told that politics share this unreality to the full, since it is generally supposed that democracy has at last really triumphed and is now entering into its kingdom. Doubtless the political events of this century have convinced every one that change in the relations of men to each other is at hand; but before that change can come, it must be understood that the development of the people must be on