mething that may be put up
or down, ripened or retarded, molded, polished, made into solid or fluid
or gas at the will of the leader; or perhaps as a vegetable, from which,
though now a very poor crab, a very good peach can by manure and
exposure be in time produced--and skip the faculty of life which spawns
and spurns systems and system makers; which eludes all conditions; which
makes or supplants a thousand Phalanxes and New Harmonies with each
pulsation....

"Yet, in a day of small, sour and fierce schemes, one is admonished and
cheered by a project of such friendly aims, and of such bold and
generous proportions; there is an intellectual courage and strength in
it which is superior and commanding; it certifies the presence of so
much truth in the theory, and in so far is destined to be fact.

"I regard these philanthropists as themselves the effects of the age in
which they live, in common with so many other good facts the
efflorescence of the period and predicting the good fruit that ripens.
They were not the creators that they believed themselves to be; but they
were unconscious prophets of the true state of society, one which the
tendencies of nature lead unto, one which always establishes itself for
the sane soul, though not in that manner in which they paint it."

"Our visions have not come to naught,
Who saw by lightning in the night;
The deeds we dreamed are being wrought
By those who work in clearer light;
In other ways our fight is fought,
And other forms fulfill our thought
Made visible to all men's sight."[41]

FOOTNOTES:

[10] _Karl Marx: Biographical Memoirs_, by Wilhelm Liebknecht, page 101.

[11] _Socialism, Utopian and Scientific_, by F. Engels, London, 1892,
pages 20-25.

[12] For good accounts of the life of Owen the reader is referred to the
Biography, by Lloyd Jones, in _The Social Science Series_, 1890,
published by Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., London, and the _Life of Robert
Owen_, by Frank Podmore, 2 vols., New York, 1907.

[13] _The Industrial History of England_, by H. de B. Gibbins, London,
Methuen and Co.

[14] _Industrial History of England_, page 179.

[15] This anonymous historian is now known to have been Mr. Samuel Kydd,
barrister-at-law (_vide_ Cooke-Taylor).

[16] _The Factory System and the Factory Acts_, by R. W. Cooke-Taylor,
London, 1894.

[17] In two volumes: London, Effingham Wilson, 1857 and 1858. Vol. I
contains the Life;