in Victorian Great Britain, one sees a constant
conflict of this administrative disposition with the individualistic
commercialism of the aggressively trading and manufacturing class, the
class that in America reigns unchallenged to this day. In the latter
country Individualism reigns unchallenged, it is assumed; in the
former it has fought an uphill fight against the traditions of Church
and State and has never absolutely prevailed. The political economists
and Herbert Spencer were its prophets, and they never at any time held
the public mind in any invincible grip. Since the eighties that grip
has weakened more and more. Socialistic thought and legislation,
therefore, was going on in Great Britain through all the Victorian
period. Nevertheless, it was the Fabian Society that, in the eighties
and through the intellectual impetus of at most four or five
personalities, really brought this obstinately administrative spirit
in British affairs into relation with Socialism as such.

The dominant intelligence of this group was Mr. Sidney Webb, and as I
think of him thus coming after Marx to develop the third phase of
Socialism, I am struck by the contrast with the big-bearded Socialist
leaders of the earlier school and this small, active, unpretending
figure with the finely-shaped head, the little imperial under the lip,
the glasses, the slightly lisping, insinuating voice. He emerged as a
Colonial Office clerk of conspicuous energy and capacity, and he was
already the leader and "idea factory" of the Fabian Society when he
married Miss Beatrice Potter, the daughter of a Conservative Member of
Parliament, a girl friend of Herbert Spencer, and already a brilliant
student of sociological questions. Both he and she are devotees to
social service, living laborious, ordered, austere, incessant lives,
making the employment of secretaries their one extravagance, and
alternations between research and affairs their change of occupation.
A new type of personality altogether they were in the Socialist
movement, which had hitherto been richer in eloquence than discipline.
And during the past twenty years of the work of the Fabian Society
through their influence, one dominant question has prevailed. Assuming
the truth of the two main generalizations of Socialism, taking that
statement of intention for granted, _how is the thing to be done_?
They put aside the glib assurances of the revolutionary Socialists
that everything would be all ri