rtyless in a world that was privately owned, the assertion of
equality was an empty lie. For the rest, primordial Socialism was
entirely sketchy and experimental. It was wild as the talk of
school-boys. It disregarded the most obvious needs. It did not provide
for any principle of government, or for the maintenance of collective
thought and social determination, it offered no safeguards and
guarantees for even the most elementary privacies and freedoms; it was
extraordinarily non-constructive. It was extreme in its proposed
abolition of the home, and it flatly ignored the huge process of
transition needed for a change so profound and universal.

The early Socialism was immediately millennial. It had no patience.
The idea was to be made into a definite project forthwith; Fourier
drew up his compact scheme, arranged how many people should live in
each _phalange_ and so forth, and all that remained to do, he thought,
was to sow _phalanges_ as one scatters poppy seed. With him it was to
be Socialism by contagion, with many of his still hastier
contemporaries it was to be Socialism by proclamation. All the evils
of society were to crumble to ruins like the Walls of Jericho at the
first onset of the Great Idea.

Our present generation is less buoyant perhaps, but wiser. However
young you may be as a reformer, you know you must face certain facts
those early Socialists ignored. Whatever sort of community you dream
of, you realize that it has to be made of the sort of people you meet
every day or of the children growing up under their influence. The
damping words of the old philosopher to the ardent Social reformer of
seventeen were really the quintessence of our criticism of
revolutionary Socialism: "Will your aunts join us, my dear? No!
Well--is the grocer on our side? And the family solicitor? We shall
have to provide for them all, you know, unless you suggest a lethal
chamber."

For a generation Socialism, in the exaltation of its self-discovery,
failed to measure these primary obstacles, failed to recognize the
real necessity, the quality of the task of making these people
understand. To this day the majority of Socialists still fail to grasp
completely the Herbartian truth, the fact that every human soul moves
within its _circle of ideas_, resisting enlargement, incapable indeed
if once it is adult of any extensive enlargement, and that all
effectual human progress can be achieved only through such
enlargement. Only i