Church Sects and Parties

Abstract

ded in the spiritual, moral, political, and legal system of society. It must be, together with this, disciplined, animated, and unified by fundamental conceptions of our civilization. Its smooth and vigorous operation largely depends upon social and political conditions at large being compatible with the economic constitution of the competitive system relying on private interest and initiative. Such are: First, political conditions maintaining nationally and internationally a clear and relatively stable demarcation between the field of public activity and the field of business and a clear cut between public law and commercial and civil law; second, protection of business from overtaxation and monetary instability through wellordered public finance in all the main capitalistic states; third, interconnection of international markets and price systems and a consistent operation of international credit and monetary standards. The capitalistic system could only meet with so mairaculously favorable and compatible social conditions all over the world because it is itself one of the expressions of the spirit which gives unity and vigor to that Occidental civilization which conquered the world during the last few centuries. With this unity in spirit making for compatibility and consistency between the different spheres of life, European society was able to develop its predomninant role in the world as well in the political as in the cultural and the economic fields. Moreover, the system could be maintained only when in all countries leading groups equally interested in the development of capitalistic life defended it. These groups, however, were able to maintain themselves and their positions onlv as long as they possessed the aristocratic quality of a consciousness for the consistency and logic of the set-up of Occidental civilization, not only in its economy, but in all its aspects, and the sense for its final values.