ithout recalling
at the moment clear-headed Socialists in all of these capacities, it
is obvious that a clear-headed Socialist (that is, a Socialist with a
creed) can be a soldier, like Mr. Blatchford, or a Don, like Mr. Ball,
or a Bathchairman like Mr. Meeke, or a clergyman like Mr. Conrad Noel,
or an artistic tradesman like the late Mr. William Morris.

But some people call themselves Socialists, and will not be bound by
what they call a narrow dogma; they say that Socialism means far, far
more than this; all that is high, all that is free, all that is, etc.,
etc. Now mark their dreadful fate; for they become totally unfit to be
tradesmen, or soldiers, or clergymen, or any other stricken human thing,
but become a particular sort of person who is always the same. When once
it has been discovered that Socialism does not mean a narrow economic
formula, it is also discovered that Socialism does mean wearing one
particular kind of clothes, reading one particular kind of books,
hanging up one particular kind of pictures, and in the majority of cases
even eating one particular kind of food. For men must recognise each
other somehow. These men will not know each other by a principle, like
fellow citizens. They cannot know each other by a smell, like dogs. So
they have to fall back on general colouring; on the fact that a man of
their sort will have a wife in pale green and Walter Crane's "Triumph of
Labour" hanging in the hall.

There are, of course, many other instances; for modern society is almost
made up of these large monochrome patches. Thus I, for one, regret
the supersession of the old Puritan unity, founded on theology, but
embracing all types from Milton to the grocer, by that newer Puritan
unity which is founded rather on certain social habits, certain common
notions, both permissive and prohibitive, in connection with Particular
social pleasures.

Thus I, for one, regret that (if you are going to have an aristocracy)
it did not remain a logical one founded on the science of heraldry; a
thing asserting and defending the quite defensible theory that physical
genealogy is the test; instead of being, as it is now, a mere machine of
Eton and Oxford for varnishing anybody rich enough with one monotonous
varnish.

And it is supremely so in the case of religion. As long as you have a
creed, which every one in a certain group believes or is supposed to
believe, then that group will consist of the old recurring figures