ifeblood of the existing order of society; if all
these things hold no value for us, then we shall gravitate to
Socialism as surely as a river will find its way to the sea.
Socialism--granted its practicability, and its practicability can
never be disproved except by trial, by long and repeated trial--holds
out the promise of great blessings to mankind. And some of these
blessings it is actually capable of furnishing, even if in the end it
should prove to be a failure. Above all it could completely abolish
poverty--that is, anything like abject poverty. The productive power
of mankind, thanks to the progress of science and invention, is now so
great that, even if Socialism were to bring about a very great decline
of productiveness--not, to be sure, such utter blasting of
productiveness as has been caused by the Bolshevik insanity--there
would yet be amply enough to supply, by equal distribution, the simple
needs of all the people. Besides the abolition of poverty, there would
be the extinction of many sinister forms of competitive greed and
dishonesty. To the eye of the thinking conservative, these
things-poverty, greed, dishonesty--while serious evils, are but the
blemishes in a great and wholesome scheme of human life; drawbacks
which go with the benefits of a system in which each man is free,
within certain necessary limits, to do his best or his worst; a price
such as, in this imperfect world, we have to pay for anything that is
worth having. But to the Socialist the matter presents itself in no
such light. He sees a mass of misery which he believes--and in large
measure justly believes--Socialism would put an end to; and he has no
patience with the conservative who points out--and justly points out--
that the poverty is being steadily, though gradually, overcome in the
advance of mankind under the existing order. "Away with it," he says;
"we cannot wait a hundred years for that which we have a right to
demand today." And "away with it" we ought all to say, if Socialism,
while doing away with it, would not be doing away with something else
of infinite value and infinite benefit to mankind, both material and
spiritual; something with which is bound up the richness and zest of
life, not only for what it is the fashion of radicals to call "the
privileged few," but for the great mass of mankind. That something is
liberty, and the individuality which is inseparably bound up with
liberty. The essence of Socialism is the s