religious enthusiasm and military strength seem paramount; though they had economical effects, they were not due to economical causes. In recent centuries economical causes seem to become more powerful in relation to the rest. Yet the political ideas of the French Revolutionary writers were more powerful both in America and in Europe than any economical causes of which France at least could in that time show the results. The intellectual and generally speaking the spiritual elements of well-being have come to bulk far more largely in the public mind than ever before. A greater extension of physical comfort is desired for the avowed reason that it gives leisure and opportunities for the acquisition of spiritual good. This is the contention too (to their credit be it spoken) of many of the very socialists who would persuade us that the materialistic view of history is the only true one.

The materialistic view seems to be a reaction against a view of history which saw in it if not a record of battles a record of political events, occurring through the agency of sovereigns and statesmen. In the last hundred years it has been becoming more and more impossible to overlook the influence of the people and their industrial condition; and the distribution of property has become a more burning question than the assertion of political rights. Whether the economical element in national life has been always and alone the ruling element or not, it is an element of the first importance now even in the view of politicians. Apart from the peculiar and ultraRicardian view of Value with which Marx and Engels have identified their form of socialism, the socialistic statement of the position and claims of the working class, and more particularly the proletariate, are worthy of careful attention.

The strength of the employer is that he has property, and the weakness of the isolated workman is that he has none. It is urged that in order to prevent the existence of a dependent class of working people we should make the State the proprietor, if not of all goods, at least of the means and materials of production.

Now it is fair to recognise that this act of centralization is conceivable without the destruction of all and

every kind of private property. The notion of Hegel that without property personality does not become real has had its influence on the followers of the Young Hegelians. Their desire seems to be that, in order that as many as possible may acquire property, a particular kind of property should be taken from private hands and acquired by the State. Absolute communism is probably not a view held by any of the leaders of the school of socialists now under consideration. From the nature of the material world, possession must be exclusive. Value itself involves individual possession, whether it be value in exchange or value in use. Value involves limitation and the limitation of possession; and property is simply the legal extension of this possession, inter alia beyond present to future goods, and beyond goods made to the sources and materials and instruments of their making. The revolt is against the degree and extent of the limitation not against the limitation itself. There is no form of society that could realize the entire absence of appropriation, for what one man uses another cannot use at the same time and in the same respect.

On the other hand, it might be argued that all so-called property, owing to human mortality, is simply at the most possession for a life-time. The rights of bequest and inheritance might be conceivably altered without any attempt to abolish private property. Lassalle's criticisms of Hegel, that he represented transitory historical phases of the law of property as flowing from the philosophical notion of property itself, seem to be justified. What alterations in laws of bequest and inheritance would tend to produce greater equality in wealth and opportunities among the citizens of a State, cannot be decided without regard to the time, place, and people concerned. The same must be said of the centralization of the means of production. If history is to be our only court of appeal, we might appeal to it for record of the fact that human nature has made its most solid progress slowly and tentatively. The only deadly sin would be to rest content with things as they are. Socialists have done good service by drawing attention to the frequent absence of real liberty, and the presence of very great inequality.

The proletariate have not much more liberty in the

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choice of their work than the poor suitor in the days. when Lord Eldon said "The law is open to all," and was answered (by Horne Tooke) "So is the Freemasons' Tavern." On the other hand, because unskilled labourers are now at the bottom of the scale, it does not seem necessary for the better ordering of the commonwealth that they should be raised to the top. English economists of past generations have no doubt unfairly favoured the predominance of the Middle Classes in the conduct of the affairs of the nation. But we need not pass from one extreme to another. Men who work with their hands for wages are of the same flesh and blood as any other members of society, and are no more free from weak and evil passions than any others. The wiser socialists speak rather of a removal of classes, which would mean of the social distinction of classes, the econonomic distinction of classes being probably irremoveable because being, so far as can be seen, indispensable to efficient work. Under the most extensively centralized government of industry it is hard to believe that in the hands of human beings, as they are now known to us (and to speak of them otherwise is Utopian), industry could create an adequate quantity of products without the old aids of divided labour and separate employments, leading necessarily to different mental and bodily habits, as well as flowing naturally from different capacities of mind and body. The utilising of such "variations seems essential to economical progress, and indeed to progress of any kind in an age when extreme specialisation is demanded for excellence in any branch of science as well as of industry.

A change in the method of distribution is not so difficult to conceive. The abolition of production for sale and a return to production for use have seemed an attractive prospect even to men who have no keen sympathy with the philanthropic side of socialism. The attraction of the "Social Revolution" for such men as Richard Wagner the composer, has lain largely in this feature of it. Wagner thinks that money-making has been the curse of music as of other arts in these latter days; the social revolution would rejuvenate music by making it to be studied for its own sake; there would be

hope then for the Music of the Future; and it would take the form of the musical drama, the highest form of art, because conjoining all the arts in one, but the latest product of time, because never perfectly to be realized without the enthusiasm of a united free and enlightened. democracy. But at present the poets or poetasters are paid to write words for music already composed, and composed for hire, whereas the theme should beget its own music in the mind of one poet-musician, or in the mind of poets and musicians who are of one heart and soul, and feel one common inspiration.'

There is certainly nothing so prosaic as money-making; but to abolish our usual standard of value and means of exchange we need something more than descriptions of the artistic and even of the political and social defects of things as they are. As was before said, economic progress has been in time past largely if not wholly due to "natural selection"; and, if we would change our system of industrial rewards and punishments, we should need to proceed tentatively. If it be answered that socialism as such cannot be realized piecemeal or experimentally, but must be all together or not at all, then it is difficult to believe that socialism in the hands of its scientific expounders has ceased after all to be a Utopia; it is the prophecy of a change in human nature to be effected suddenly by a change of the laws of the land. But this doctrine of "all or nothing" is not essential to socialism; and tentative efforts to carry out the idea of collective property and collective manufacture, whether in parishes, cities, or counties, will, by their success or failure, throw light on the possibilities of the future, and need rouse no fiery passions.

A revolution so gradually prepared may be truly described as the aim of the majority of socialists in this country now. It was not the aim of Marx and Engels, still less of the majority of their followers. A sudden cataclysm was on their lips if not in their thoughts. Evil conditions would wax worse and worse, till they

1 Wagner, Oper und Drama (1851). Die Kunst und die Revolution (1849). Kunstwerk der Zukunft (1850). The Music of the Future (1860), translated by Dannreuther, 1873.

reached a point beyond all endurance; then the suffering people would rise and overthrow the "capitalistic system.' The Hegelian method, it may be admitted, was consistent with sudden revolution; but, as must also be admitted, it would carry us to a point beyond the cataclysm. Hegelian development never takes us back to an original simplicity of relations, but includes the conflicting elements while reconciling them. It would lead us not to the conclusion that "capitalistic" production will "pass away with a great noise," but that the old opposition between employer and labourer will give place to a system in which the labourer will be his own employer. Yet (to proceed in the spirit of Hegel) this does not mean a return to independent individual labour or domestic industry. It might mean the formation of social groups, in which the capitalists are the members, and the work is undertaken by and for the groups, the place of the employer being taken by a hired manager of the group, while the workmen are at once hired and hirers. Lassalle had this in view; but he thought capital was inaccessible to the workmen without the aid of the State. If this aid were given, the result would be to unite employer and employed, but still to leave the capitalist outside.

There seems to be nothing in the theory of Development to point us clearly to any centralization of all industrial organization in the State. It has yet to be shown in practice that beyond a certain limit centralization would not be fatal to the spontaneous organization which has as yet been the main source of all industrial progress. Cooperative industry could be carried on by such a closely federated union, that practically it would be as centralized as the Land League or the Roman Catholic Church, as an imperium in imperio. But it could also be, like Protestantism, a multiplication of separate societies, with no closer external bond than that of separate trades societies that have their common interests and also their points of divergence. No philosophical theory can show which of these two forms will be taken eventually by cooperative industry. There is nothing in the theory of development to show whether the future hides in it socialism established and maintained by the State or