form of an accepted statement of principles or corpus of doctrine, or in any abstract shape whatever, it is possible that they may pass into practical Socialism sans le savoir, by a series of lapses, just as it is possible that they may maintain an Individualistic system without recognition of that fact or its consequences.

The drift has for some time tended towards Socialism: that is, to minor measures of empirical Socialism which commend themselves to sentiment or to the sense of expediency. For instance, there has been a strong inclination to relieve the poorer parents in the community of a part of the burden of their duty to their children, and to help the more indigent class generally to avoid the full results of their economic disadvantages. This, being done by a common effort of the other members of the State, is a step within the bounds of Socialism.

And this leads to another criticism which strengthens the hands of those who seek to promote Socialism. Indi

vidualists, as a school, are not prepared to offer any humane system as an alternative to it. Many do little more than denounce the creed of Marx and his successors with equal vehemence and honesty; but mere denunciation, in the end, strengthens a plausible case by arousing interest in it and some sympathy for it, and invective is a weapon which grows weaker the oftener it is used against the same opponent. What is wanted, at least for people who prefer to hold their opinions in a logical form, is a system for the amelioration of social conditions which will satisfy the human conscience as it exists in Western lands to-day without destroying the sound foundations of society in accordance with socialistic incitements; in a word, construction instead of destruction, or healthy evolution instead of a revolution prompted by visionaries and carried out in despair.

It is well to admit that the Individualist pur sang has failed as a social philosopher and will fail, precisely because he ignores the human conscience and fails to realize that sympathy is as natural and inherent a force in human nature as selfishness itself; indeed, it is one of the basal laws of life, long antecedent to the appearance of man upon the earth, and one of the primary factors of the individual. And, in face of this fact, in order to criticise Socialism effectively, it is expedient to give due recognition to some of its strongest positions and not to advance against the whole line without making due allowance for them.

It is often urged that all progress in evolution from the protozoa to man has been accomplished by the aid of unrestricted competition in the struggle for life. And if this be granted, the Individualist says, "How will you ensure further progress if this mainspring of evolution be taken away?" But the argument is fallacious. Considering the matter from the biological point of

view, it is plain that unrestricted competition among the creatures lower than man evolved at length a power, thought, which overthrew the previous conditions and dominated the world of brute force and blind contest for survival. This force has its own way of dealing with things, and the more completely that is followed the greater is the success of those who follow it. No human beings approach so nearly to the kind of competition that prevails among beasts as the lowest races of mankind, who are rightly called the most backward. The proposal to eliminate the results of thought in order that we may revert to that condition of affairs over which thought has triumphed, and the belief that further progress can only be attained by returning to the form of competition which at last produced thought as its mastering term, are illusory; in fact the suggestion is that we should decapitate progress, so to speak, in order that advance may continue. Nor is the protective power of organized "social" life, as distinct from the free struggle of individuals, without example even outside humanity. The development of instinct gives examples of it. "The phases of social life exhibited by animals other than man," said Huxley, "sometimes curiously foreshadow human policy." Instances in the insect world are well known, and for one example among many in the case of the higher animals it is interesting to refer to the account given from personal observation by Mansfield Parkyns of the organization of baboons in their forays on the cornfields.2

1

Nor, indeed, is a return to the Free Competition, the unrestricted struggle for existence, as it flourishes outside humanity, practicable; but this is what the Individualist system postulates if it is logical in its doctrine of progress.

1"The Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals." 2" Life in Abyssinia."

Law, from the point of view of the strict Individualists, is Socialism; at least, one of its most important functions is the use of the power of the community to protect those who are not strong enough to enforce their own rights. If it were the solemn duty of humanity to adopt consistent and thorough Individualism, law should be abolished; he only should preserve his property, or even his life, who could do so by his own hand or cunning; widows and orphans should be a prey to those strong enough to seize them. The decalogue should be deleted. Then we should indeed have reverted to the kind of competition which prevails in the ocean and the forest. But it would hardly mean progress.

As compared with a doctrine which, pushed to its logical extreme, involves the disappearance of morality, the creed of Socialism appears, in the abstract, a most beneficent gospel. It proposes to use the individual for the best advantage of the State and to organize the State for the best advantage of the individual. And if practice could be made to conform to theory, Socialism would have a claim upon humanity that could not rightly be repudiated.

A principle enunciated in a few lines in the late Professor W. Wallace's "Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy" may be cited:

The apprehension of a thing from one side or aspect-the apprehension of one thing apart from its connections-the retention of a term or formula apart from its context-is what Hegel terms "abstract" . . . To abstract is a necessary stage in the process of knowledge. But it is equally necessary to insist on the danger of clinging, as to an ultimate truth, to the pseudo-simplicity of abstraction, which forgets altogether what it is in certain situations desirable for a time to overlook.

In this sense, Socialism is a system full of the error of "abstraction." It

S." one can almost d reader exclaim. glo-Saxon snobbishou art, and how invailest!" One can Sighing; but that is have forogtten to Dan babies. Behold less summer evening, g fathers and these others paying homperambulators. It nd, perceiving it, one this little moment. the City and the sothe tea-table have otten; that even the y have faded into a ificance. For in realall atoms of plump the lords dominant last court of appeal, spring of all its strivte it is a comforting ss them!

H. H. Bashford.

view, it is plain that unrestricted competition among the creatures lower than man evolved at length a power, thought, which overthrew the previous conditions and dominated the world of brute force and blind contest for survival. This force has its own way of dealing with things, and the more completely that is followed the greater is the success of those who follow it. No human beings approach so nearly to the kind of competition that prevails among beasts as the lowest races of mankind, who are rightly called the most backward. The proposal to eliminate the results of thought in order that we may revert to that condition of affairs over which thought has triumphed, and the belief that further progress can only be attained by returning to the form of competition which at last produced thought as its mastering term, are illusory; in fact the suggestion is that we should decapitate progress, so to speak, in order that advance may continue. Nor is the protective power of organized "social" life, as distinct from the free struggle of individuals, without example even outside humanity. The development of instinct gives examples of it. "The phases of social life exhibited by animals other than man," said Huxley, "sometimes curiously foreshadow human policy." stances in the insect world are well known, and for one example among many in the case of the higher animals it is interesting to refer to the account given from personal observation by Mansfield Parkyns of the organization of baboons in their forays on the cornfields.2

In

Nor, indeed, is a return to the Free Competition, the unrestricted struggle for existence, as it flourishes outside humanity, practicable; but this is what the Individualist system postulates if it is logical in its doctrine of progress. 1"The Anatomy of Invertebrated Animals." "Life in Abyssinia."

Law, from the point of view of the strict Individualists, is Socialism; at least, one of its most important functions is the use of the power of the community to protect those who are not strong enough to enforce their own rights. If it were the solemn duty of humanity to adopt consistent and thorough Individualism, law should be abolished; he only should preserve his property, or even his life, who could do so by his own hand or cunning; widows and orphans should be a prey to those strong enough to seize them. The decalogue should be deleted. Then we should indeed have reverted to the kind of competition which prevails in the ocean and the forest. But it would hardly mean progress.

As compared with a doctrine which, pushed to its logical extreme, involves the disappearance of morality, the creed of Socialism appears, in the abstract, a most beneficent gospel. It proposes to use the individual for the best advantage of the State and to organize the State for the best advantage of the individual. And if practice could be made to conform to theory, Socialism would have a claim upon humanity that could not rightly be repudiated.

A principle enunciated in a few lines in the late Professor W. Wallace's "Prolegomena to the Study of Hegel's Philosophy" may be cited:

The apprehension of a thing from one side or aspect-the apprehension of one thing apart from its connections-the retention of a term or formula apart from its context-is what Hegel terms "abstract" . . . To abstract is a necessary stage in the process of knowledge. But it is equally necessary to insist on the danger of clinging, as to an ultimate truth, to the pseudo-simplicity of abstraction, which forgets altogether what it is in certain situations desirable for a time to overlook.

In this sense, Socialism is a system full of the error of "abstraction." It

regards men and women as uniform units for the construction of that State which the visionary sees completed in his dreams. If Individualism ignores conscience, Socialism ignores character. But the development of character with the consequent multiplication of the objects to which human energy directs itself is one of the strongest motive forces of civilization. Diversity of character is necessary in a healthy, progressive community, and it cannot flourish in a dead level sameness of surroundings. Moreover, Socialism ignores that love of independence which is not only an incentive to work, but an element in nobility of disposition. And it condemns the good form of acquisitiveness as well as the bad. The abuses of the desire for property are patent to everybody. But there is a sense in which a man is denied the exercise of his best relations with the world if the right of individual possession is denied to him. In family life this is especially manifest. A parent should not be the servant of the State to administer as concerns his children a system decreed by it. There should be safeguards against the abuse of parental power, The Gentleman's Magazine.

but, these being provided, the family should be the very means of developing to the best the individual characters of the parents. And the fruit of a man's art, handicraft or labor should be his own, in order to satisfy that basal concept of right in the human mind that he who creates should have power to dispose; lacking this, how can a man have that love of his work which alone prompts him to give to it his finest energy? He may dedicate his output to the common use; but the gift should be voluntary.

It is with a proper reticence that one shrinks from the baring of a soul, with a certain trepidation that one sets upon paper any aspects of its development. For the soul of our suburb is both real and very desperately in earnest; and it has almost found itself. Four years have gone to its making, four pregnant years, that have called into being a thousand new emotions, a thousand dauntless aspirations. Four years ago this suburb of ours was but the merest red-brick tag, strung out along a railway leading to a place that shall be nameless. It

was a raw

Though the Hegelian system has been abandoned as an explanation of the Universe, it remains a very valuable indicator of the course of the human mind; and one may well hope that the movement of the twentieth century will be neither to a creed of Individualism nor to a creed of Socialism, but to a plan which, rising above both, will eliminate the brutality of the one and the futility of the other, and harmonize all that is found to be good in he two seemingly contradictory conceptions of a right civilization.

Godfrey Burchett.

and unfledged youngling, that lolled in its shirt-sleeves and talked across garden-walls, that kept poultry in its backyards and lodgers in its upper chambers. It was intensely democratic; and indeed it still remains so,- across the line. But then it is hardly necessary to remark that, in common with all railway lines, this one is extremely unmistakable, and it is upon this side of it that our suburb has really evolved. Here, from its former waste, from its jungle of dusty grass and half-made roads, it has grown to its present high estate. Four years ago it was not; to