eveloping in all of them a common
temper and purpose; and, secondly, on the number of those who can be
taught to adopt and welcome it. The theory of socialism is, therefore,
as a practical force, primarily that form of it which is operative among
the mass of socialists; and when once we realise this, we shall have no
further difficulty in discovering what the doctrines are with which, at
all events, we must begin our examination. We are guided to our
starting-point by the broad facts of history.

The rights of the many as opposed to the actual position of the few--a
society in which all should be equal, not only in political status, but
also in social circumstances; ideas such as these are as old as the days
of Plato, and they have, from time to time in the ancient and the modern
world, resulted in isolated and abortive attempts to realise them. In
Europe such ideas were rife during the sixty or seventy years which
followed the great political revolution in France. Schemes of society
were formulated which were to carry this revolution further, and
concentrate effort on industrial rather than political change. Pictures
were presented to the imagination, and the world was invited to realise
them, of societies in which all were workers on equal terms, and groups
of fraternal citizens, separated no longer by the egoisms of the private
home, dwelt together in palaces called "phalansteries," which appear to
have been imaginary anticipations of the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. Here
lapped in luxury, they were to feast at common tables; and between meals
the men were to work in the fields singing, while a lady accompanied
their voices on a grand piano under a hedge. These pictures, however,
agreeable as they were to the fancy, failed to produce any great effect
on the multitudes; for the multitudes felt instinctively that they were
too good to be true. That such was the case is admitted by socialistic
historians themselves. Socialism during this period was, they say, in
its "Utopian stage." It was not even sufficiently coherent to have
acquired a distinctive name till the word "socialism" was coined in
connection with the views of Owen, which suffered discredit from the
failure of his attempts to put them into practice. Socialism in those
days was a dream, but it was not science; and in a world which was
rapidly coming to look upon science as supreme, nothing could convince
men generally--not even the most ignorant--which had not, or