Under Socialism all this will, of course, be altered.  There will be no people living in fetid dens and fetid rags, and bringing up unhealthy, hunger-pinched children in the midst of impossible and absolutely repulsive surroundings.  The security of society will not depend, as it does now, on the state of the weather.  If a frost comes we shall not have a hundred thousand men out of work, tramping about the streets in a state of disgusting misery, or whining to their neighbours for alms, or crowding round the doors of loathsome shelters to try and secure a hunch of bread and a night’s unclean lodging.  Each member of the society will share in the general prosperity and happiness of the society, and if a frost comes no one will practically be anything the worse.

Upon the other hand, Socialism itself will be of value simply because it will lead to Individualism.

Socialism, Communism, or whatever one chooses to call it, by converting private property into public wealth, and substituting co-operation for competition, will restore society to its proper condition of a thoroughly healthy organism, and insure the material well-being of each member of the community.  It will, in fact, give Life its proper basis and its proper environment.  But for the full development of Life to its highest mode of perfection, something more is needed.  What is needed is Individualism.  If the Socialism is Authoritarian; if there are Governments armed with economic power as they are now with political power; if, in a word, we are to have Industrial Tyrannies, then the last state of man will be worse than the first.  At present, in consequence of the existence of private property, a great many people are enabled to develop a certain very limited amount of Individualism.  They are either under no necessity to work for their living, or are enabled to choose the sphere of activity that is really congenial to them, and gives them pleasure.  These are the poets, the philosophers, the men of science, the men of culture—­in a word, the real men, the men who have realised themselves, and in whom all Humanity gains a partial realisation.  Upon the other hand, there are a great many people who, having no private property of their own, and being always on the brink of sheer starvation, are compelled to do the work of beasts of burden, to do work that is quite uncongenial to them, and to which they are forced by the peremptory, unreasonable, degrading Tyranny of want.  These are the poor, and amongst them there is no grace of manner, or charm of speech, or civilisation, or culture, or refinement in pleasures, or joy of life.  From their collective force Humanity gains much in material prosperity.  But it is only the material result that it gains, and the man who is poor is in himself absolutely of no importance.  He is merely the infinitesimal atom of a force that, so far from regarding him, crushes him:  indeed, prefers him crushed, as in that case he is far more obedient.