application of its principles; but, except for the abortive
experiments to which I have referred already, it is thus far a theory
only, and it is as a theory only that we can examine it.

What, then, as a theory, are the distinctive features of socialism? Here
is a question which, if we address it indiscriminately to all the types
of people who now call themselves socialists, seems daily more
impossible to answer; for every day the number of those is increasing
who claim for their own opinions the title of socialistic, but whose
quarrel with the existing system is very far from apparent, while less
apparent still is the manner in which they propose to alter it. The
persons to whom I refer consist mainly of academic students, professors,
clergymen, and also of emotional ladies, who enjoy the attention of
footmen in faultless liveries, and say their prayers out of
prayer-books with jewelled clasps. All these persons unite in the
general assertion that, whatever may be amiss with the world, the
capitalistic system is responsible for it, and that somehow or other
this system ought to be altered. But when we ask them to specify the
details as to which alteration is necessary--what precisely are the
parts of it which they wish to abolish and what, if these were
abolished, they would introduce as a substitute--one of them says one
thing, another of them says another, and nobody says anything on which
three of them could act in concert.

Now, if socialism were confined to such persons as these, who are in
America spoken of as the "parlour socialists," it would not only be
impossible to tell what socialism actually was, but what it was or was
not would be immaterial to any practical man. As a matter of fact,
however, between socialism of this negligible kind--this sheet-lightning
of sentiment reflected from a storm elsewhere--and the socialism which
is really a factor to be reckoned with in the life of nations, we can
start with drawing a line which, when once drawn, is unmistakable.
Socialism being avowedly a theory which, in the first instance at all
events, addresses itself to the many as distinct from and opposed to the
few, it is only or mainly the fact of its adoption by the many which
threatens to render it a practical force in politics. Its practical
importance accordingly depends upon two things--firstly, on its
possessing a form sufficiently definite to unite what would otherwise be
a mass of heterogeneous units, by d