In my
preceding chapters I hope I have made it clear that "property" even
to-day is a very qualified and uncertain thing, a natural vague
instinct capable of perversion and morbid exaggeration and needing
control, and that Socialism seeks simply to give it a sharper, juster
and rationally limited form in relation to the common-weal.

Or again, the opponent has it that Socialism "abolishes the
family"--and with it, of course, "every sacred and tender
association," etc., etc. To that also I have given a chapter.

I do not think much Anti-Socialism is dishonest in these matters. The
tricks of deliberate falsification, forgery and falsehood that
discredit a few Conservative candidates and speakers in the north of
England and smirch the reputations of one or two London papers, are
due to a quite exceptional streak of baseness in what is on the whole
a straightforward opposition to Socialism. Anti-Socialism, as its name
implies, is no alternative doctrine; it is a mental resistance, not a
mental force. For the most part one is dealing with sheer intellectual
incapacity; with people, muddle-headed perhaps, but quite
well-meaning, who are really unable to grasp the quantitative element
in things. They think with a simple flat certitude that if, for
example, a doctor says quinine is good for a case it means that he
wishes to put every ounce of quinine that can be procured into his
patient, to focus all the quinine in the world upon him; or that if a
woman says she likes dancing, that thereby she declares her intention
to dance until she drops. They are dear lumpish souls who like things
"straightforward" as they say--all or nothing. They think
qualifications or any quantitative treatment "quibbling," to be loudly
scorned, bawled down and set aside.

In controversy the temptations for a hot and generous temperament,
eager for victory, to misstate and overstate the antagonist's position
are enormous, and the sensible Socialist must allow for them unless he
is to find discussion intolerable. The reader of the preceding
chapters should know exactly how Socialism stands to the family
relations, the things it urges, the things it regards with
impartiality or patient toleration, the things it leaves alone. The
preceding chapters merely summarize a literature that has been
accessible for years. Yet it is extraordinary how few antagonists of
Socialism seem able even to approach these questions in a rational
manner. One admirably typi