generations if every one did not give infinitely more than that for which he is paid in coin, in "cheques," or in civic rewards. The race would soon become extinct if mothers did not sacrifice their lives to take care of their children, if men did not give all the time, without demanding an equivalent, if men did not give just to those from whom they expect no reward.
If middle-class society is decaying, if we have got into a blind alley from which we cannot emerge without attacking past institutions with torch and hatchet, it is precisely because we have calculated too much. It is because we have let ourselves be influenced into giving only to receive. It is because we have aimed at turning society into a commercial company based on debit and credit.
Collectivists know this. They vaguely understand that a society could not exist if it carried out the principle of "Each according to his deeds." They have a notion that necessaries—we do not speak of whims—the needs of the individual, do not always correspond to his works. Thus De Paepe tells us: "The principle—the eminently Individualist principle—would, however, be tempered by social intervention, for the education of children and young persons (including maintenance and lodging), and by the social organization for assisting the infirm and the sick, for retreats for aged workers, etc." They understand that a man of forty, father of three children, has other
