ruling impulse of the world. Socialism is the
mask that will mould the world to that better Anarchism of good men's
dreams....

But these are long views, glimpses beyond the Socialist horizon. The
people who would set up Anarchism to-day are people without human
experience or any tempering of humour, only one shade less impossible
than the odd one-sided queer beings one meets, ridiculously
inaccessible to laughter, who, caricaturing their Nietzsche and
misunderstanding their Shaw, invite one to set up consciously with
them in the business of being Overmen, to rule a world full of our
betters, by fraud and force. It is a foolish teaching saved only from
being horrible by being utterly ludicrous. For us the best is faith
and humility, truth and service, our utmost glory is to have seen the
vision and to have failed--not altogether.... For ourselves and such
as we are, let us not "deal in pride," let us be glad to learn a
little of this spirit of service, to achieve a little humility, to
give ourselves to the making of Socialism and the civilized State
without presumption--as children who are glad they may help in a work
greater than themselves and the toys that have heretofore engaged them.

CHAPTER XII

ADMINISTRATIVE SOCIALISM

Sec. 1.

Marx gave to Socialism a theory of world-wide social development, and
rescued it altogether from the eccentric and localized associations of
its earliest phases; he brought it so near to reality that it could
appear as a force in politics, embodied first as the International
Association of Working Men, and then as the Social Democratic movement
of the continent of Europe that commands to-day over a third of the
entire poll of German voters. So much Marx did for Socialism. But if
he broadened its application to the world, he narrowed its range to
only the economic aspect of life. He arrested for a time the
discussion of its biological and moral aspects altogether. He left it
an incomplete doctrine of merely economic reconstruction supplemented
by mystical democracy, and both its mysticism and incompleteness,
while they offered no difficulties to a labouring man ignorant of
affairs, rendered it unsubstantial and unattractive to people who had
any real knowledge of administration.

It was left chiefly to the little group of English people who founded
the Fabian Society to supply a third system of ideas to the amplifying
conception of Socialism, to convert Revolutionary Soci