Note 15 — Chapter V · SOCIAL REFORM

To ward off the most serious misunderstanding, I must remind every reader of the chapter on Social Reform, as well as on the Hebrew religion and on the ethics of the Gospels, that I am narrating the phases of my own development. I am not attempting to do justice to all that is excellent in those great religions and in these great social movements; I am trying to show at what points, despite those excellences, I myself felt compelled to diverge from them, to push beyond them. In regard to Socialism I recognize the immense service it has performed in awakening the conscience of modern society to the sufferings of the working class. And in pointing out the dangers of opportunism, the fallacy of provisionalism, I am speaking of dangers from which I felt that I must escape, not casting a slur on the noble personalities that have appeared in the field of social reform during my own time and among my friends and acquaintances. Such personalities, because of their inbred fineness, may be immune against tendencies which yet undeniably exist, and which therefore require to be explicitly apprehended.