IN THIS STUDY  we will look at home economics very closely. We will see its mechanism, the spirit of its work and what we expect from it.

     We will also see how the organized modern republic looks, when it has reached its maturity. We will see the individuals who constitute it. And, finally, we will see how home economics will help us in attaining such an organization.

     Some words by Nietzsche will help us begin this work.

We are not saying that Nietzsche has written these words for us today. Nor would we intend to make sure that Nietzsche has indeed written these words. We even do not intend to interpret them. Because we would not have anything to say against those, who would tell us that, in these words, we have found precisely that, which is not there. Nor to the one who would tell us that we are saying less than what is contained therein, or that we are examining one aspect while there are more to be examined.

     Everybody finds the wholeness of the image inside his/her experience. It is there, that the contradictions are removed, the corners are rounded, and that moment of life is projected, in which we see nothing more than ourselves.

     These words will be needed as a motivation for us, to begin our work.

     They are the following:

     "Und wenn dir nur alle Leitern fehlen so musst du verstehen noch auf deinen Kopf zu steigen, wie wolltest du anders aufwarts steigen?"

     Which could perhaps be literally translated as follows:

     "And now, if all ladders are missing to you, you must understand to climb even on your head, otherwise how would you want to go up high?"

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WHEN MAN COMES  to the world, he finds himself surrounded by a multitude of persons and things, all of which want to offer him their services.

     His cradle is ready to welcome him, affectionate hands to tend him, his gorgeous car to take him for a walk. All these, however, withdraw after a few months.

     Man must stand on his own feet. This is the first steady step of his development.

     But science tells us that the biological evolution of man requires that intellectual man rise above physical man.

     So, by analogy, when intellectual man reaches a certain age, he will need to stand on his own feet, to be sustained by his own powers.

     And, as physical man needs a steady ground to stand on, so also intellectual man, if we assume that he has reached the appropriate point, when he has felt that his powers are capable of supporting him, needs a steady ground to stand on.

    So his steadiness is identical with the steadiness of the ground. This ground is physical man.

     The steady ground is a healthy body.

     The body, which will be able to support intellectual man, when the latter will want to stand on his own feet.

     And this is the moment, when all help from outside is missing and we must use our own powers in order to go on in life; our own brain, our own reasoning. In such a way, that we neither damage ourselves nor disturb the balance of the environment.

     Reason functions unerringly in these circumstances. The point is, whether we have the strength to follow it. Whether we will be able to carry the weight of this human that appears in front of us. Whether we will be able to bring to an end the titanic task, for which we are destined.

     Whether we will have the power to support and nurture the newborn, like another mother earth. Whether we can endure felling his foot pressing on us and his hoe hitting us.

     The man, who has provided for this moment. The man who will be able to hold intellectual man and allow him to take roots inside him, so that he can be fed and developed until he can taste his fruit. The man, who will be integrated, who will have attained his form and will be able to present it, always being different from all the others. The man, who will be able to use his reason, the thinking man. The healthy man. This man, with these resources and this preparation, is ready to take part as a manager in the organization of the modern republic. And do this, until modern republic reaches its fulfillment, when managers and individuals will be one and the same thing.

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MODERN MAN DOES NOT  live with longings and dreams. He wants to live in his time, to be satisfied by it, to become friends with it. To enjoy it.

     Who is going to help him? The one, who is leading him today.

     Today man has science as a leader in his actions. He wants to walk on scientific grounds. On grounds of truth.

     The science, that we have as leader in our study today, is the economic science. A basic hypothesis in economic science is the principle of economic energy. That is, the principle that we should always succeed in getting the greatest result with as less effort as possible, as less sacrifice as possible. This is the economic principle.

In this way man wants to copy the way nature works. Within the eternal becoming, he wants to perceive the one steady thing that produces it and always remains the same. He wants to step on the axis of the wheel of life in order to follow its rhythm, which becomes faster and faster, and neither be crushed by its passing nor pant in chasing it.

     He wants to learn how the tree lives with his proud branches folded up in places almost nonexistent for our eyes, and it is not suffocated, does not suffer and does not lose any of its freshness.

     With this effort, one thinks that one wants to reach beyond the limits of human possibilities. One wants to show us, how far a man, who will make good use of his powers, can reach. A man, who will give to every cell of his body the opportunity to develop and live, and will take a small part of the surplus of each cell and place it outside of his body, in order to step on it and see the whole of life in its totality. A man, who will give to every cell of his body the opportunity to develop and live, and will take a small part of the surplus of each cell and place it outside of his body, in order to step on it and see the whole of life in its totality.

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THIS IS THE MAN , who constitutes the individual of the modern republic in his maturity. The man, who, being pressed by the weight of responsibility, will succeed in rising and will not count this work against life and deny life, not even while not expressing this openly, but will use this work as a study towards a greater adjustment, achievement and advancement of life.

     The man, who, in his failures, will find not disappointment, but his weak parts which he will strengthen, his lack of prudence which he will replenish. The man, who will care about his improvement and perfection. The man, who will pump his knowledge out of life and for whom books will be a criterion and a pleasure. Criterion, because within them he will find the right solution to the problems that preoccupy him. Pleasure, because he will have already found the solution himself.

     He will be able to feel their beauty. He will be able to appreciate their value, because he will have felt the hard work they have required. Modern republic needs as its instrument that man, who will have satisfied himself and whose quests and worries are for the advantage of others and the development of wholeness.

     This man will crystallize the juice of his thinking into a flower and will offer it to the rich bouquet of the republic in order to replace an artificial one.

     We will not melt iron in order to show the liquid state of things. That state is ready in nature. We only have to find its source.

     Our times want the bouquet of the republic to be alive, with each flower in its unique proper position, the position in which it is most productive. The aesthetic appearance of the bouquet will also be the true structure of the republic. "Whatever we have felt here as beauty, we will meet it as truth some day", Schiller has said to his artists.

     So we have specialization after completion, formalization and unification without classification into patterns. Adjustment of means to the goal to the degree of identification.

     Justice is born, it is not made. Old systems become pressing patterns with time. There are also systems that we use schematically until we live them consciously. Systems exist in order to serve an idea. Men are the carriers of ideas and systems. A most general idea is the idea of life.

     The system of life, which each person will freely compose within the limits available to his era, his self and the free action of the environment, is unique. The way, in which each one realizes that he has been living schematically, is also unique. The life of the man, who will hold these two tendencies inside him, will be identical to practicing his duties. The trace of his life will be his work. His work will not only serve the moment it was done, but will remain so that we can use it in comparative studies and in drawing general conclusions out of it, on which works of progress can be supported and developed. It contains something unchangeable inside it. A part of life.  The work he gives us has come out of his life. So it will not cease to live, even if we do not use it; like the plants, which live outside of our life cycle and we have not used them for any purpose, do not cease to live.

     His work will be homogeneous and complete, like the work of a plant, which always brings forth the same flower and always faces the world with a smile.

     It is these smiles that modern republic wants to collect, so that it can hear their spontaneous laugh.

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MODERN REPUBLIC WANTS  its individuals to be organized bodies, in which a muscle fiber will always produce muscles and a neural axis will produce nerves and they will wait for their placement in the place which is unique and appropriate to each one, so that the breath of the organism will pass through them and they will live.

     Inside the human miracle, which these individuals will offer us with their life, we will see the image of the organized republic. (Plato considered the republic as being "a human in magnification".)

     Our times want their citizens to be well tuned strings in the orchestra of the republic. Such that their voice, although bound in one and the same position and rhythm, will always be like the song of the free bird that sings the joy of life.

     And if the joy of life comes from the spiritual, psychological, physical, financial euphoria, the joy of life in these people will come from harmonious symbiosis; it will spring from the euphoria of the whole.

     This is the image of the modern republic, organized according to the requirements of our times, when it will have reached its fulfillment. Starting from limited boundaries, until it reaches universality.

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AND NOW, HOW  will home economics help in this work? What is the means it will offer? What is the string? What is the organized body?

     What is that unique flower, which will represent home economics, the economic man, in the bouquet of the republic? Nothing.

     The economic man, cooperator and helper of life, has undertaken the heavy role of cultivating the soil, where these flowers will develop and blossom. The economic man will take the crystallized juice and drip it on a flower to dissolve an obstacle and thus allow life to pass freely.  He is Atlas, carrying the Earth. He is the trustee, who keeps the worlds in their trajectories. He does not care if he will be crushed, when he is to prevent a clash. He is invisible in his work, as life is also invisible in her work. In order for us to reach his country, we must replace the company of noise and agitation with the company of calmness and silence. Then we will hear the melody of an incessant rhythmical, productive, complex work, which is strengthened by the increase of life around him.

     But what does man need in order to live? Food? Doctors? Education? For all these, there are appropriate institutions in the republic. What is the unique thing that home gives to man?

     Atmosphere. The incense of the altar of Hestia, which fills the house, gives the climate man needs in order to live. Therein, the miracle of assimilation will take place, damages will be repaired and the powers of man will be renewed. In the warmth of home man will really rest, he will breathe freely. At home, circulation in the members of the soul and the body will be restored. There, he will feel the bondage around his body dissolve, the limits that pressed him disappear. He will live in the nonexistence, the spaciousness of infinity. He will be renewed.

     At home, he will drink the potion which will charm him to see the beauty of life in its source, the beauty which springs from health.

     This is the wealth, that home economics will give us.

     A healthy individual, whose presence the republic wants to enjoy.

     But in order for home to present this individual to us, home is connected with an economic action, which has a broader effect. Even reaching the national economy of a country. In spite of the fact that the ground of this economic action is still unexplored, we will take a look on it in order to see at least what spirit must predominate in its accomplishment. We will try to find principles, which can be applied to every home, in all homes, however different they may be the one from the other. Because the nature of each man is different, his tendencies are different, the environment where he lives is different. As also the composition of each family is different, its principles are different. The person, who acts the economy, is different each time. Everything is different from everything else and also continuously changing.

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IN THIS WORK  we will be helped by our observations and the science which deals with every economy, the economic science.

     Economic science, however it may be extended, has always kept in its name the name of its section referring to home [translator's note: in Greek, economy = eco-nomy and eco = home]. So there is a very close relationship between home economics and economic science.

     But let us come closer to the notions represented by these words we are using today.

     We said, science. What is science? Every set of knowledge, which is reduced to an organic system of general truths. Science is the exploration of the ultimate reason of ideas and things, with the purpose of serving a certain (physical, psychological, or spiritual) need of man.  We will be using economic science.

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WEALTH IS THE GOAL  of every economy. So economic science aims at exploring the actions, which men take in order to reach that goal. Wealth. These actions will not come the one after the other simply and randomly, but their course will be determined so that they reach a goal.

     Economic science is a science of goals.

     So every economic phenomenon dynamically contains that, which comes after it, and the latter necessarily exists inside the former. This is what economic science tells us.  Therefore prudence is the first and main characteristic of economic man. Economic man, together with economic science, aims at finding this last phenomenon in order to present it to us and put it as a goal, as the end of his actions, as the final form he wants to attain.

     Besides these, economic science aims at leading us on how to attain this form.

     Wealth is the skeleton of this final form, which we dress each time according to the nature of the economic action.  Our ancestors have said that wealth is the product of careful cultivation. Cultivation = product of beautiful work [translator's note: in Greek, cultivation = kalli-ergeia and kalli = beautiful, ergeia = working]. Beautiful = (work) done at its time [translator's note: in Greek, beautiful = horaia and hora = time]. And, as they have placed everything in the position their feeling told them to be true, they have put wealth in a place that the centuries have not been able to change and the passing eras have consolidated. They have placed it in the bosom of peace. Today, economic science places it there, too. Only the garment of the notion has changed, in order to suit our times. The essence of the notion and the way which brings us there remain the same, as we will see.

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THE GOAL WE WANT  to reach today, by following the principles of economic science, is a physically and mentally healthy individual. An integrated, living individual.

     At this moment, of course, not all homes include the child in their composition. However, all people pass through that composition [including the child] in some way or another, and this is the composition we will examine today.

     We want home economics to give us fully evolved human beings. Persons, who can endure the blows of the physical and social environment. Persons, whom these blows will strengthen and not annihilate, will advance them without throwing them into self-indulgence, will toss them into a higher civilization with their kicks. If man has built the house in order to be protected from the difficult moments of the physical environment and live. If he has advanced it to a satisfactory status, with the help of advanced technology, today. Now, that he is consciously evolving to a mental man, he must see to it that he protects this man, too, from the anomalies of the environment. The home of spiritual man is man himself. Human society is his environment. So, when he improves himself, he improves his environment.

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THEREFORE,  the actions of home economics will be focused on physical and mental hygiene.

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