dy of what is Good, it is very convenient to make a rough
division of our subject into general and particular. There are first the
interests and problems that affect us all collectively, in which we have
a common concern and from which no one may legitimately seek exemption;
of these interests and problems we may fairly say every man should do so
and so, or so and so, or the law should be so and so, or so and so; and
secondly there are those other problems in which individual difference
and the interplay of one or two individualities is predominant. This
is of course no hard and fast classification, but it gives a method of
approach. We can begin with the generalized person in ourselves and end
with individuality.

In the world of ideas about me, I have found going on a great social and
political movement that correlates itself with my conception of a great
synthesis of human purpose as the aspect towards us of the universal
scheme. This movement is Socialism. Socialism is to me no clear-cut
system of theories and dogmas; it is one of those solid and extensive
and synthetic ideas that are better indicated by a number of different
formulae than by one, just as one only realizes a statue by walking
round it and seeing it from a number of points of view. I do not think
it is to be completely expressed by any one system of formulae or by
any one man. Its common quality from nearly every point of view is the
subordination of the will of the self-seeking individual to the idea of
a racial well-being embodied in an organized state, organized for every
end that can be obtained collectively. Upon that I seize; that is the
value of Socialism for me.

Socialism for me is a common step we are all taking in the great
synthesis of human purpose. It is the organization, in regard to a
great mass of common and fundamental interests that have hitherto been
dispersedly served, of a collective purpose.

I see humanity scattered over the world, dispersed, conflicting,
unawakened... I see human life as avoidable waste and curable confusion.
I see peasants living in wretched huts knee-deep in manure, mere
parasites on their own pigs and cows; I see shy hunters wandering in
primaeval forests; I see the grimy millions who slave for industrial
production; I see some who are extravagant and yet contemptible
creatures of luxury, and some leading lives of shame and indignity; tens
of thousands of wealthy people wasting lives in vulgar and unsati