7. The Essays had appeared separately in
1813-14.] Here he lays down that "any general character, from the best
to the worst, may be given to any community, even to the world at large,
by the application of proper means; which means are to a great extent
at the command and under the control of those who have influence in the
affairs of men." [Footnote: P. 19.] The string on which he continually
harps is that it is the cardinal error in government to suppose that
men are responsible for their vices and virtues, and therefore for their
actions and characters. These result from education and institutions,
and can be transformed automatically by transforming those agencies.
Owen founded several short-lived journals to diffuse his theories. The
first number of the New Moral World (1834-36) [Footnote: This was not
a journal, but a series of pamphlets which appeared in 1836-1844. Other
publications of Owen were: Outline of the Rational System of Society
(6th ed., Leeds, 1840); The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of
the Human Race, or the coming change from Irrationality to Rationality
(1849); The Future of the Human Race, or a great, glorious and peaceful
Revolution, near at hand, to be effected through the agency of departed
spirits of good and superior men and women (1853); The New Existence of
Man upon Earth, Parts i.-viii., 1854-55.] proclaimed the approach of an
ideal society in which there will be no ignorance, no poverty, and no
charity--a system "which will ensure the happiness of the human race
throughout all future ages," to replace one "which, so long as it shall
be maintained, must produce misery to all." His own experimental
attempt to found such a society on a miniature scale in America proved a
ludicrous failure.

It is to be observed that in these socialist theories the conception of
Progress as indefinite tends to vanish or to lose its significance. If
the millennium can be brought about at a stroke by a certain arrangement
of society, the goal of development is achieved; we shall have reached
the term, and shall have only to live in and enjoy the ideal state--a
menagerie of happy men. There will be room for further, perhaps
indefinite, advance in knowledge, but civilisation in its social
character becomes stable and rigid. Once man's needs are perfectly
satisfied in a harmonious environment there is no stimulus to cause
further changes, and the dynamic character of history disappears.

Theories of Progre