In its essence the Socialist movement amounts to this; it is an
attempt in this warring chaos of a collective mind to pull itself
together, to develop and establish a governing idea of itself. It is
like a man saying to himself resolutely, "What am I? What am I doing
with myself? Where am I drifting?" and making an answer, hesitating at
first, crude at first, and presently clear and lucid.

The Socialist movement is from this point of view, no less than the
development of the collective self-consciousness of humanity.
Necessarily, therefore, it must be international as well as outspoken,
making no truce with prejudices against race and colour. These
national and racial collective consciousnesses of to-day are things as
vague, as fluctuating as mists or clouds, they melt, dissolve into one
another, they coalesce, they split. No clear isolated national mind
can ever maintain itself under modern conditions; even the mind of
Japan now comes into the common melting-pot of thought. We Socialists
take up to-day the assertion the early Christians were the first to
make, that mankind is of one household and one substance; the
Samaritan who stoops to the wounded stranger by the wayside our
brother rather than that Levite....

In a very different sense indeed the Socialist propaganda must be _the
germ of the collective self-consciousness of mankind in the coming
time_. If the purpose of Socialism is to prevail, its scattered
writings, its dispersed, indistinct and confused utterances must
increase in height and breadth and range, increase in power and
service, gather to themselves every means of expression, grow into an
ordered system of thought, art, literature and will. The Socialist
Propaganda of to-day must beget the whole Public Opinion of to-morrow
or fail, the Socialists must play the part of a little leaven to
leaven the whole world. If they do not leaven it then they are
altogether defeated....

Sec. 4.

Now, this conception of Socialism as being ultimately a moral and
intellectual synthesis of mankind from which fresh growth may come,
sets a fresh test of value upon all the activities of the
Socialist--and opens up altogether new departments for research. Let
us face the peculiar difficulty of the Socialist position. We propose
to destroy the competitive capitalistic system that owns and sustains
our present newspapers, gives and leaves money to universities, endows
fresh pulpits, publishes, advertises, and bu