eally contemplate Socialism as our
achievement, to impose guiding ideas and guiding habits, we have to
co-ordinate all the Good Will that is active or latent in our world in
one constructive plan. To-day the spirit of humanity is lost to
itself, divided, dispersed and hidden in little narrow distorted
circles of thought. These divided, misshapen circles of thought are
not "human nature," but human nature has fallen into these forms and
has to be released. Our fundamental business is to develop the human
spirit. It is in the enlargement and enrichment of the average circle
of thought that the essential work and method of Socialism is to be
found.

CHAPTER X

SOCIALISM A DEVELOPING DOCTRINE

Sec. 1.

So far we have been discussing the broad elementary propositions of
Modern Socialism. As we have dealt with them, they amount to little
more than a sketch of the foundation for a great scheme of social
reconstruction. It would be a poor service to Socialism to pretend
that this scheme is complete. From this point onward one enters upon a
series of less unanimous utterances and more questionable suggestions.
Concerning much of what follows, Socialism has as yet not elaborated
its teaching. It has to do so, it is doing so, but huge labours lie
before its servants. Before it can achieve any full measure of
realization, it has to overcome problems at present but half solved,
problems at present scarcely touched, the dark unsettling suggestion
of problems that still await formulation. The Anti-Socialist is freely
welcome to all these admissions. No doubt they will afford grounds for
some cheap transitory triumph. They affect our great generalizations
not at all; they detract nothing from the fact that Socialism presents
the most inspiring, creative scheme that ever came into the chaos of
human affairs. The fact that it is not cut and dried, that it lives
and grows, that every honest adherent adds not only to its forces but
to its thought and spirit, is itself inspiration.

The new adherent to Socialism in particular must bear this in mind,
that Socialism is no garment made and finished that we can reasonably
ask the world to wear forthwith. It is not that its essentials remain
in doubt, it is not that it does not stand for things supremely true,
but that its proper method and its proper expedients have still to be
established. Over and above the propaganda of its main constructive
ideas and the political work for th