lace presently
to sit, talk, and argue in the smoking-rooms; to read in the library;
to see the students' pictures upon the walls; to listen to the
students' orchestra, discoursing such music as they have never dreamed
of before; to look on while His Majesty's Servants of the People's
Palace perform a play, and to hear the bright-eyed girls sing
madrigals.

[1884.]

THE ASSOCIATED LIFE. [The substance of this paper was delivered as the
presidential speech at the opening of the Hoxton Library and
Institute.]

It has seemed to me--for reasons which I hope to make clear to
you--that the present occasion, the opening of our newly-acquired
Place of Gathering, is one on which something may be said upon the
subject of the Associated Life--that is to say, on the union, or
combination of men, or of men and women, in order to effect by
collective action objects--objects worthy of effort--impossible for
the individual to attempt.

It would seem at first sight that combination should be the very
simplest thing in the world. It is self-evident that those who want
anything have a much better chance of getting it if they join together
in order to demand it, or to work for it. Like one or two other simple
laws of human nature, this, though the simplest, is the hardest to get
people to understand and to accept. Nothing is so difficult as to
persuade people to trust each other, even to the extent of standing
together and sticking together and working together in order to get
what they want.

The first association of men was forced upon them for protection, I
wonder how many ages--hundreds of thousands of years--it took to teach
men to join together in order to protect themselves against
starvation, wild beasts, and each other. The necessity of
self-preservation first made men associate, and changed hunters into
soldiers, and turned the whole world into a camp. It was war, which
brought men together; it was war which taught men the necessity of
order, discipline, and obedience; without the necessity for fighting,
without the military spirit, no association at all would now be
possible. A vast number of men practically use modern safety at this
day for the purpose of being fighters, every man against his
neighbour. Just as no one would, even now, do any work but for the
necessity of finding food for himself and his family, so no one would
ever have begun to stand side by side with his neighbour but for the
absolute cer