under which we live, to the
same degree in which, when well administered, it would be better. And
I do not, I confess, see what guarantees socialists can offer that the
administration will be good. I have far less confidence than Allison
in mere machinery; and I am sure that no machinery will produce good
results in a society where a large proportion of the citizens have no
other idea than to exploit the powers of government in their own
interest. But such, I believe, is the case in existing societies; and
I do not see by what miracle they are going to be transformed.

"Such is my first difficulty with regard to collectivism. And though
it would not prevent me from supporting, as in fact I do support,
cautious and tentative experiments in the direction of practical
socialism, it does prevent me from looking to a collectivist future
with anything like the breezy confidence which animates Allison. And I
will go further: I will say that no man who possesses an adequate
intelligence, and does not deliberately stifle it, has a right to any
such confidence. Setting aside, however, for the sake of argument,
this difficulty, and admitting the possibility of an honest and
efficient collectivist state, I am confronted with a further and even
graver cause of hesitation. For while I consider that the distribution
of the opportunities of life is, under the existing system, in the
highest degree capricious and inequitable, yet I would prefer such
inequity to the most equitable arrangement in the world if it afforded
a better guarantee for the realization of certain higher goods than
would be afforded by the improved system. And I am not clear in my own
mind, and I do not see how anyone can be clear, that collectivism gives
as good a security as the present system for the realization of these
higher goods. And this brings me back to the question of liberty. On
this point there is, I am well aware, a great deal of cant talked, and
I have no wish to add to it. Under our present arrangements, I admit,
for the great mass of people, there is no liberty worth the name;
seeing that they are bound and tied all their lives to the meanest
necessities. And yet we see that out of the midst of all this chaos of
wrong, there have emerged and do emerge artists, poets, men of science,
saints. And the appearance of such men seems to me to depend on the
fact that a considerable minority have the power to choose, for good or
for evil, their