is against Human Nature._ This objection I have left until
last because, firstly, it is absolutely true, and secondly, it leads
naturally to the newer ideas that have already peeped out once or
twice in my earlier chapters and which will now ride up to a
predominance in what follows, and particularly the idea that an
educational process and a moral discipline are not only a necessary
part, but the most fundamental part of any complete Socialist scheme.
Socialism is against Human Nature. That is true, and it is equally
true of everything else; capitalism is against human nature,
competition is against human nature, cruelty, kindness, religion and
doubt, monogamy, polygamy, celibacy, decency, indecency, piety and sin
are all against human nature. The present system in particular is
against human nature, or what is the policeman for, the soldier, the
debt-collector, the judge, the hangman? What means the glass along my
neighbour's wall? Human nature is against human nature. For human
nature is in a perpetual conflict; it is the Ishmael of the universe,
against everything, and with everything against it; and within, no
more and no less than a perpetual battleground of passion, desire,
cowardice, indolence and good will. So that our initial proposition as
it stands at the head of this section, is, as an argument against
Socialism, just worth nothing at all.

None the less valuable is it as a reminder of the essential
constructive task of which the two primary generalizations of
Socialism we have so far been developing are but the outward and
visible forms. There is no untutored naturalness in Socialism, no
uneducated blind force on our side. Socialism is made of struggling
Good Will, made out of a conflict of wills. I have tried to let it
become apparent that while I do firmly believe not only in the
splendour and nobility of the Socialist dream but in its ultimate
practicality, I do also recognize quite clearly that with people just
as they are now, with their prejudices, their ignorances, their
misapprehensions, their unchecked vanities and greeds and jealousies,
their crude and misguided instincts, their irrational traditions, no
Socialist State can exist, no better State can exist, than the one we
have now with all its squalor and cruelty. Every change in human
institutions must happen concurrently with a change of ideas. Upon
this plastic, uncertain, teachable thing Human Nature, within us and
without, we have, if we r