you know the story of Prometheus, friend Jonathan? It is, of
course, a myth, but it serves as an illustration of my present point.
Prometheus, for ridiculing the gods, was bound to a rock upon Mount
Caucasus, by order of Jupiter, where daily for thirty years a vulture
came and tore at his liver, feeding upon it. Then there came to his
aid Hercules, who unbound the tortured victim and set him free. Like
another Prometheus, the soul of man to-day is bound to a rock--the
rock of capitalism. The vulture of Greed tears the victim,
remorselessly and unceasingly. And now, to break the chains, to set
the soul of man free, Hercules comes in the form of the Socialist
movement. It is nothing less than this; my friend. In the last
analysis, it is the bondage of the soul which counts for most in our
indictment of capitalism and the liberation of the soul is the goal
toward which we are striving.

It is to-day, under capitalism, that men are reduced to a dull level.
The great mass of the people live dull, sordid lives, their
individuality relentlessly crushed out. The modern workman has no
chance to express any individuality in his work, for he is part of a
great machine, as much so as any one of the many levers and cogs.
Capitalism makes humanity appear as a great plain with a few peaks
immense distances apart--a dull level of mental and moral attainment
with a few giants. I say to you in all seriousness, Jonathan, that if
nothing better were possible I should want to pray with the poet
Browning,--

Make no more giants, God--
But elevate the race at once!

But I don't believe that. I am satisfied that when we destroy man-made
inequalities, leaving only the inequalities of Nature's making, there
will be no need to fear the dull level of life. When all the chains of
ignorance and greed have been struck from the Prometheus-like human
soul, then, and not till then, will the soul of man be free to soar
upward.

(7) For the reasons already indicated, Socialism would not destroy the
incentive to progress. It is possible that a stagnation would result
from any attempt to establish absolute equality such as I have already
described. If it were the aim of Socialism to stamp out all
individuality, this objection would be well founded, it seems to me.
But that is not the aim of Socialism.

The people who make this objection seem to think that the only
incentive to progress comes from a few men and their hope and desire
to be ma