ctiliously truthful. We
must condemn too the taking of any income from the community that is
neither earned nor conceded in the collective interest. But to this last
point, and to certain issues arising out of it, I will return in the
section next following this one.

And it follows evidently from our general propositions that every form
of prostitution is a double sin, against one's individuality and against
the species which we serve by the development of that individuality's
preferences and idiosyncracies.

And by prostitution I mean not simply the act of a woman who sells
for money, and against her thoughts and preferences, her smiles and
endearments and the secret beauty and pleasure of her body, but the act
of anyone who, to gain a living, suppresses himself, does things in a
manner alien to himself and subserves aims and purposes with which he
disagrees. The journalist who writes against his personal convictions,
the solicitor who knowingly assists the schemes of rogues, the barrister
who pits himself against what he perceives is justice and the right,
the artist who does unbeautiful things or less beautiful things than
he might, simply to please base employers, the craftsman who makes
instruments for foolish uses or bad uses, the dealer who sells and
pushes an article because it fits the customer's folly; all these are
prostitutes of mind and soul if not of body, with no right to lift an
eyebrow at the painted disasters of the streets.

3.8. SOCIAL PARASITISM AND CONTEMPORARY INJUSTICES.

These broad principles about one's way of living are very simple;
our minds move freely among them. But the real interest is with the
individual case, and the individual case is almost always complicated
by the fact that the existing social and economic system is based upon
conditions that the growing collective intelligence condemns as unjust
and undesirable, and that the constructive spirit in men now seeks to
supersede. We have to live in a provisional State while we dream of and
work for a better one.

The ideal life for the ordinary man in a civilized, that is to say a
Socialist, State would be in public employment or in private enterprise
aiming at public recognition. But in our present world only a small
minority can have that direct and honourable relation of public service
in the work they do; most of the important business of the community is
done upon the older and more tortuous private ownership system,