109. Another exceptional and powerful factor which will also be changed under the world authority, is the advantage of making use of modern machines. By machines, one understands realities by the help of which one is able to produce "work". So this will mean realities which can relieve or exempt terrestrial mankind from some of its rough, daily tasks. As a machine can only gain a foothold and thereby become widespread in the world if it can carry out more and better work than a terrestrial person in one particular field or another, then the consequence will be that sometimes a machine will be constructed to do more than ten times or a hundred times the amount of work a single terrestrial person could do in a similar period of time. In order to exist, the whole of terrestrial humanity over the world has to carry out a certain amount of work each day. By means of a machine this amount will be reduced, and just as much work power released as the machine is constructed to replace. If, for instance, a machine replaces one hundred terrestrial people, this will then mean that these hundred individuals are at the disposal of the remainder of the community so that its collective working hours will thus shorten the daily working hours of those hundred people. As machines are used in their millions all over the world and new ones are continually being invented, this means that terrestrial mankind's conditions of life have been reduced by millions and millions of working hours and are continually being still further reduced. So, on account of machines, terrestrial mankind has gained an enormous fund of leisure time, which is still growing. This indicates that not only can people's working day be shortened, but also that, in addition to the weekly "day of rest", there will be more days off for every single terrestrial person. But, as inactivity is not in harmony with the law of existence, one will still hear throughout the world that "six days shall you work, but on the seventh you shall rest".* This means that the surplus days off which individuals will have cannot justifiably be used for inactivity. But as no physical work can be done on those days, then the work must be of a mental nature. This again means that these non-physical work days will become study days. The coming world authority will therefore establish schools and colleges where, on those days, by law, terrestrial mankind will be obliged to study art, science, languages, social economy, handicrafts, and so on, thus becoming trained free of charge in the special subjects and areas selected by the single individuals themselves as being in harmony with their personal wish, interest and ability, and by these means make contact with the law of existence and be raised to the level of sensitivity for the "coming of the Great Birth". In this way, under the future world administration, the law of existence will be brought into full effect. But, as this administration is not to be found at the present time, the conditions prevailing are quite naturally bound to be the opposite. Admittedly, we are already witnessing the invention of machines and their application and we are also witnessing the leisure time they provide for terrestrial people; but here the difference appears. We are actually witnessing this leisure time as clearly constituting an undermining "cancer" for terrestrial humanity itself, for it is identical with what is so often called in ordinary terms "idleness", expressed by the term "unemployment", now appearing on a large scale in all continents. As unemployment leads to "destitution", we see in our time machines creating destitution, working against the divine world plan, whose aim, as we have just learned, is to allow machines to relieve some of that material pressure which is still clinging to the life of terrestrial mankind in the form of rough, physical work and by that relief making it easier for people to gain access to the regions of spirit and divine knowledge. If we are to discover why it is that machines have not yet been brought forward to complete harmonization with the world plan, we must return once again to those factors which still determine that "right" is not united with "might", and that the terrestrial community - or rather its social economics - still constitutes a colossus sitting enthroned on the principle: "Every man for himself", concentrated in the form of "private interest", and therefore it has not sufficiently developed its "blood" which, in the form of "common interest", shall bind it together into a united body of "right" in pure essence. As "private interest", in the form of "money power" or "private power", owns the world's valuable goods, it has become the controller of all work, and thereby of administration. As private power cannot be interested in the development or the acquisition of power by "common interest" or "common power" - which would mean its own destruction - it encourages those projects which can increase its possessions and supplement it with still more power. But in order to maintain its power and existence, it must make use of an army of workers. As these are living beings, "private power" is forced to provide its workers with food and lodging in the form of more or less narrowly measured wages, if it is to make any profit on their work, in just the same way as a farmer has to provide his domestic animals with food and shelter if he expects them to give him any profit. So, when a machine is invented, private power has considerable advantage in acquiring it, thus being able to dismiss just as many workers as the machine was built to replace, and to increase its "private capital" by the same amount which, in the form of wages, would have been the same workers' prerequisite for life. This circumstance is not exactly flattering for private power's harmony with the law of existence or that great commandment: "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself", for it reminds one too much of those realities upon which is built "true heathendom" or the world's dark morality. That this circumstance is, nevertheless, a fact, is proved by the growing mass of unemployment now appearing all over the world, which unavoidably has to be the consequence. As unemployment means destitution, then that consequence will result in the deprivation of thousands and thousands of terrestrial people's natural means of acquiring their daily necessities of life through honest work. And again, the unavoidable results of this must be poverty, begging, swindling, prostitution, crime, indolence, vagabondage, lethargy and suicide, which collectively cannot but be identified as being unnatural, as a consumptive disease or a gaping wound in the body of the terrestrial human community. This wound is now growing at such a speed that the masses throughout the world are beginning to see their existence threatened, and through trade unions, political organizations and associations of many varieties they have begun to rise up in opposition. And this resistance will not cease until the valuable goods of the entire world have been collected into a treasury common to all five continents and to the whole of the terrestrial community, protected by world authority and administered by world government, and therefore able to guarantee natural conditions of life, genuine law and justice, humanity and universal love for every living being.
 
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* Translator's note: Deuteronomy 5:13 - "Six days thou shalt labour and do all thy work...".