Walther Rathenau , author of Die neue Gesellschaft and other studies of economic and social conditions in modern Germany, was born in 1867. His father, Emil Rathenau, was one of the most distinguished figures in the great era of German industrial development, and his son was brought up in the atmosphere of hard work, of enterprise, and of public affairs. After his school days at a Gymnasium , or classical school, he studied mathematics, physics and chemistry at the Universities of Berlin and of

The criterion which we have indicated for the socialized society of the future is a material one. But is the spiritual condition of an epoch to be determined by material arrangements? Is this not a confession of faith in materialism? We are speaking of a criterion, not of a prime moving force. I have no desire, however, to avoid going into the material, or rather we should say mechanical, interpretation of history. I have done it more than once in my larger works, and for the sake of coherence I

Our description of the future order of society was tacitly based on the assumption that our mentality, our ethics, our spiritual outlook, would remain as they are at present. This assumption is a probable one, but it is not irrevocably certain. What we have endeavoured to demonstrate is simply the obvious fact—the fact which our once so rigid but, since November, 1918, uprooted and flaccid intellectualism has forgotten—that our salvation is not to be found in any kind of mechanical apparatus or

Edited by J. E. SPINGARN This series is intended to introduce foreign authors whose works are not accessible in English, and in general to keep Americans in touch with the intellectual and spiritual ferment of the continent of Europe. No attempt will be made to give what Americans miscall "the best books," if by this is meant conformity to some high and illusory standard of past greatness; any twentieth-century book which displays creative power or a new outlook or more than ordinary interest or