elf. He is built that way. He is typical of a
good many other men and women built on the same pattern.
What are you going to do with them? Change them--their
instincts, their very nature, rooted in the centuries?
Or, as an alternative, vary Socialism to fit John Smith?
Which is likely to prove the shorter operation?"

That, however, is by the way. Here is the point at issue:

"He has heard that Socialism proposes to acknowledge
woman's service to the State by paying her a weekly wage
according to the number of children that she bears and
rears. I don't propose to repeat his objections to the idea;
they could hardly be called objections. There is an ugly
look comes into his eyes; something quite undefinable,
prehistoric, almost dangerous, looks out of them.... In
talking to him on this subject you do not seem to be
talking to a man. It is as if you had come face to face
with something behind civilisation, behind humanity, something
deeper down still among the dim beginnings of
creation...."

Now, no doubt Mr. Jerome is writing with emphasis here. But there is
sufficient truth in the passage for it to stand here as a rough symbol
of another factor in this question. John Smithism, that manly and
individualist element in the citizen, stands over against and resists
all the forces of organisation that would subjugate it to a collective
purpose. It is careless of coming national cessation and depopulation,
careless of the insurgent spirit beneath the acquiescences of Mrs.
Smith, careless of its own inevitable defeat in the economic struggle,
careless because it can understand none of these things; it is
obstinately muddle-headed, asserting what it conceives to be itself
against the universe and all other John Smiths whatsoever. It is a
factor with all other factors. The creative, acquisitive, aggressive
spirit of those bigger John Smiths who succeed as against the myriads of
John Smiths who fail, the wider horizons and more efficient methods of
the educated man, the awakening class-consciousness of women, the
inevitable futility of John Smithism, the sturdy independence that makes
John Smith resent even disciplined co-operation with Tom Brown to
achieve a common end, his essential incapacity, indeed, for collective
action; all these things are against the ultimate triumph, and make for
the ultimate civilisation even of John Smith.

Sec. 11

It may be doubted if the increasing collec