idea
of communism.

And the inevitableness of the world-deep struggle between these
two ideas is proved by the fact that in no other way, as soon as the
objective world is introduced at all, can we conceive of love and
malice as expressing themselves. Love must naturally express
itself in the desire to "have all things in common"; and malice
must naturally express itself in the desire to have as little as
possible in common and as much as possible for ourselves alone.

The "possessive instinct," although it may often be found
accompanying like an evil shadow some of the purest movements
of love, must be recognized as eternally arising out of the depths
of the power opposed to love. If we have any psychological
clairvoyance we can disentangle this base element from some of
the most passionate forms of the sexual instinct and from some of
the most passionate forms of the maternal instinct. It is undeniable
that the possessive instinct does accompany both these emotions
and we are compelled to recognize that, whenever or wherever it
appears, it is the expression of the direct opposite of love.

So inevitably does the complex vision manifest itself in the idea of
communism that it would be legitimate to say that the main object
of human life as we know it at present is the realization of the
ideas of truth and beauty and nobility in a world-wide
communistic state.

As far as the human soul in our present knowledge of it is
concerned there is no other synthesis possible except this
synthesis. And there is no other synthesis possible except this,
because this and this alone realizes the ideal which the abysmal
power of love implies. And the power of love implies this ideal
because the power of love is the only unity which fuses together
the ideas of reality and beauty and nobility; and because it is
impossible to conceive the power of love as embodying itself in
these ideas except in a world-wide communistic state.

We are able to prove that this is no speculative hypothesis but a
fact based upon experience, by a consideration of the opposite
ideal. For evil, as we have hinted in many places, _has_ its ideal.
The ideal of evil, or of what I call "malice," is the annihilation of
the will to creation. This ideal of malice is in fact an obstinate and
continuous resistance to the power of creation; a resistance carried
so far as to reduce everything that exists to eternal non-existence.
The profoundest experience of the