hooses to practise it to-day. The real controlling force in these
matters is social influence, public opinion, a sort of conscience and
feeling for the judgment of others that is part of the normal human
equipment. And the same motives and considerations that keep people's
lives pure and discreet now, will be all the more freely in operation
under Socialism, when money will count for less and reputation for
more than they do now. Modern Socialism is a project to change the
organization of living and the circle of human ideas; but it is no
sort of scheme to attempt the impossible, to change human nature and
to destroy the social sensitiveness of man.

I do not deny the intense human interest of these open questions, the
imperative need there is to get the truth, whether one considers it to
be one's own truth or the universal truth, upon them. But my point is
that they are to be discussed apart from Socialist theory, and that
anyhow they have nothing to do with Socialist politics. It is no doubt
interesting to discuss the benefits of vaccination and the justice and
policy of its public compulsion, to debate whether one should eat meat
or confine oneself to a vegetable dietary, whether the overhead or the
slot system is preferable for tramway traction, whether steamboats are
needed on the Thames in winter, and whether it is wiser to use metal
or paper for money; but none of these things have anything to do with
the principles of Socialism. Nor need we decide whether Whistler,
Raphael or Carpaccio has left us the most satisfying beauty, or which
was the greater musician, Wagner, Scarlatti or Beethoven, nor
pronounce on the Bacon-Shakespeare controversy in any prescribed way,
because we accept Socialism.

Coming to graver matters there are ardent theologians who would create
an absolute antagonism between Socialism and Christianity, who would
tie up Socialism with some extraordinary doctrine of Predestination,
or deny the possibility of a Christian being a Socialist or a
Socialist being a Christian. But these are matters on different
planes. In a sense Socialism is a religion; to me it is a religion, in
the sense, that is, that it gives a work to do that is not
self-seeking, that it determines one in a thousand indecisions, that
it supplies that imperative craving of so many human souls, a
devotion. But I do not see why a believer in any of the accepted
creeds of Christianity, from the Apostles' Creed upward, should not
al