the future. The natural man, at least in our temperate climates, and as
exhibited in the behaviour of his natural progenitor, the child, is all
for vigour and experiment. It is we, the adult community, the trustees
of the child, who are to blame if his maturity fails of the eager
questioning and the untiring labours of his unspoilt youth.

But we are dealing in this volume rather with changes of thought than
with the actual life of the times. Theories affecting the organization
of work, the distribution of the product, and the government of society
have had much to do with our present difficulties. They have arisen from
the conditions of the industrial revolution and the doctrines of the
political revolution which began about the same time, and they have
reacted ever since on the work and wages, the life and government of the
mass of Western men. They are discussed in our eighth chapter. It may be
said broadly that in this sphere, as in philosophy, the old and
_simpliste_ doctrines have been criticized almost to the point of
extinction, but that no new all-embracing practical synthesis has taken
their place. The Marxian theory that social evolution has been due
mainly to economic causes, that these have produced inevitably the
present--or recent--capitalist system, which inevitably must be turned
upside down in the interests of manual labour--this is no longer
dominant in any Western community, though it is fighting a desperate
battle in Eastern Europe. But it is equally true that the capitalist
system, presented in an ideal and moralized form in the Utopias of St.
Simon and Comte, is not generally accepted now as an ideal for industry.
The spirit which Comte desired and believed would animate the moralized
employer, acting as the providence of his workpeople, we look to find
rather in a reconstituted and moralized State. We all share this hope in
our degree, _The Times_ as well as the _Daily News_, and we do not
expect the new spirit to operate simply through the free-will and
private capacity and initiative of individuals. The joint stock company
has settled that.

What we are waiting and hoping for is the time when, under the aegis of
a benevolent State, capital and labour may live together in many
mansions and, like the monks of old, follow many rules of life. In this
region our ideal of unity is more diversified than in the realm of
thought, and there is no demand for a Descartes.

And here it is interesting to n