will have perished. Even crime itself, so
the socialist tells us, will diminish to the vanishing point, till there
is nothing of it except here and there a sort of pathological survival,
an atavism, or a "throwing back" to the forgotten sins of the
grandfathers. Here and there, some poor fellow afflicted with this
disease may break into my socialistic house and steal my pictures and my
wine. Poor chap! Deal with him very gently. He is not wicked. He is ill.

This last argument, in a word, begs the whole question. With perfect
citizens any government is good. In a population of angels a socialistic
commonwealth would work to perfection. But until we have the angels we
must keep the commonwealth waiting.

Nor is it necessary here to discuss the hundred and one modifications of
the socialistic plan. Each and all fail for one and the same reason. The
municipal socialist, despairing of the huge collective state, dreams of
his little town as an organic unit in which all share alike; the
syndicalist in his fancy sees his trade united into a co-operative body
in which all are equal; the gradualist, in whose mind lingers the leaven
of doubt, frames for himself a hazy vision of a prolonged preparation
for the future, of socialism achieved little by little, the citizens
being trained as it goes on till they are to reach somehow or somewhere
in cloud land the nirvana of the elimination of self; like indeed, they
are, to the horse in the ancient fable that was being trained to live
without food but died, alas, just as the experiment was succeeding.

There is no way out. Socialism is but a dream, a bubble floating in the
air. In the light of its opalescent colors we may see many visions of
what we might be if we were better than we are, we may learn much that
is useful as to what we can be even as we are; but if we mistake the
floating bubble for the marble palaces of the city of desire, it will
lead us forward in our pursuit till we fall over the edge of the abyss
beyond which is chaos.

_VII.--What Is Possible and What Is Not_

SOCIALISM, then, will not work, and neither will individualism, or at
least the older individualism that we have hitherto made the basis of
the social order. Here, therefore, stands humanity, in the middle of its
narrow path in sheer perplexity, not knowing which way to turn. On
either side is the brink of an abyss. On one hand is the yawning gulf of
social catastrophe represented by socialism.