splendours, beyond her throned presence jewelled with links and points
and cressets of fire, crowned with stars, robed in the night, hiding
cruelties, I caught a moment's vision of the coming City of Mankind,
of a city more wonderful than all my dreaming, full of life, full of
youth, full of the spirit of creation....

CHAPTER II

THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA OF SOCIALISM

The fundamental idea upon which Socialism rests is the same
fundamental idea as that upon which all real scientific work is
carried on. It is the denial that chance impulse and individual will
and happening constitute the only possible methods by which things may
be done in the world. It is an assertion that things are in their
nature orderly, that things may be computed, may be calculated upon
and foreseen. In the spirit of this belief Science aims at a
systematic knowledge of material things. "Knowledge is power,"
knowledge that is frankly and truly exchanged--that is the primary
assumption of the _New Atlantis_ which created the Royal Society and
the organization of research. The Socialist has just that same faith
in the order, the knowableness of things and the power of men in
co-operation to overcome chance; but to him, dealing as he does with
the social affairs of men, it takes the form not of schemes for
collective research but for collective action and the creation of a
comprehensive design for all the social activities of man. While
Science gathers knowledge, Socialism in an entirely harmonious spirit
criticizes and develops a general plan of social life. Each seeks to
replace disorder by order.

Each of these systems of ideas has, of course, its limits; we know in
matters of material science that no calculated quantity is ever exact,
no outline without a fogging at the edge, no angle without a curve at
the apex; and in social affairs also, there must needs always be
individuality and the unexpected and incalculable. But these things do
not vitiate the case for a general order, any more than the different
sizes and widths and needs of the human beings who travel prevent our
having our railway carriages and seats and doors of a generally
convenient size, nor our sending everybody over the same gauge of
rail.

Now Science has not only this in common with Socialism that it has
grown out of men's courageous confidence in the superiority of order
to muddle, but these two great processes of human thought are further
in sympathy in the demand