midnight
In Germany , where its vote was more than a third of the total vote of the empire , all other parties and powers had united to fight it . It would not do , Ostrinski explained , for the proletariat of one nation to achieve the victory , for that nation would be crushed by the military power of the others ; and so the Socialist movement was a world movement , an organization of all mankind to establish liberty and fraternity . It was the new religion of humanity -- or you might say it was the fulfillment of the old religion , since it implied but the literal application of all the teachings of Christ . Until long after midnight Jurgis sat lost in the conversation of his new acquaintance . It was a most wonderful experience to him -- an almost supernatural experience . It was like encountering an inhabitant of the fourth dimension of space , a being who was free from all one 's own limitations . For four years , now , Jurgis had been wondering and blundering in the depths of a wilderness ; and here , suddenly , a hand reached down and seized him , and lifted him out of it , and set him upon a mountain-top , from which he could survey it all -- could see the paths from which he had wandered , the morasses into which he had stumbled , the hiding places of the beasts of prey that had fallen upon him .