eir more obvious and practical
application, an immense amount of intellectual work remains to be done
for Socialism. The battle for Socialism is to be fought not simply at
the polls and in the market-place, but at the writing-desk and in the
study. To many questions, the attitude of Socialism to-day is one of
confessed inquiring imperfection.[17] It would indeed be very
remarkable if a proposition for changes so vast and comprehensive as
Socialism advances was in any different state at this present time.

[17] The student will find very clear, informing, and
suggestive reading in Kirkup's _History of Socialism_ (A. &
C. Black, 1906). It is a fine, impartial account of these
developments, which may well be used as a corrective (or
confirmation) of this book.

It is so recently as 1833 that the world first heard the word
Socialism.[18] It appeared then, with the vaguest implications and the
most fluctuating definition, as a general term for a disconnected
series of protests against the extreme theories of Individualism and
Individualist Political Economy; against the cruel, race-destroying
industrial spirit that then dominated the world. Of these protests the
sociological suggestions and experiments of Robert Owen were most
prominent in the English community, and he it is, more than any other
single person, whom we must regard as the father of Socialism. But in
France ideas essentially similar were appearing about such movements
and personalities as those of Saint Simon, Proudhon and Fourier. They
were part of a vast system of questionings and repudiations, political
doubts, social doubts, hesitating inquiries and experiments.

[18] It was probably first used in the _Poor Man's Guardian_
in that year. See _The Life of Francis Place_, by Graham
Wallas, p. 353.

It is only to be expected that early Socialism should now appear as
not only an extremely imperfect but a very inconsistent system of
proposals. Its value lay not so much in its plans as in its hopeful
and confident denials. It had hold of one great truth; it moved one
great amendment to the conception of practical equality the French
Revolution had formulated, and that was its clear indication of the
evil of unrestricted private property and of the necessary antagonism
of the interests of the individual to the common-weal, of "Wealth
against Commonwealth," that went with that. While most men had to go
prope