Every age has its typical idea of heaven and its typical idea of hell (in some of them it would be hard to tell which is which), and every civilization, has its typical idea of God.  A civilization with sovereign men in it has a sovereign God; and a crowd civilization, reflecting its mood on the heavens, is inclined to a pleasant, large-minded God, eternally considering everybody and considering everything, but inefficient withal, a kind of legislature of Deity, typical of representative institutions at their best and at their worst.

If we pass from our theology to our social science we come to the most characteristic result of the crowd principle that the times afford.  We are brought face to face with Socialism, the millennium machine, the Corliss engine of progress.  It were idle to deny to the Socialist that he is right—­and more right, indeed, than most of us, in seeing that there is a great wrong somewhere; but it would be impossible beyond this point to make any claim for him, except that he is honestly trying to create in the world a wrong we do not have as yet, that shall be large enough to swallow the wrong we have.  The term “Socialism” stands for many things, in its present state; but so far as the average Socialist is concerned, he may be defined as an idealist who turns to materialism, that is, to mass, to carry his idealism out.  The world having discovered two great ideals in the New Testament, the service of all men by all other men, and the infinite value of the individual, the Socialist expects to carry out one of these ideals by destroying the other.

The principle that an infinitely helpful society can be produced by setting up a row of infinitely helpless individuals is Socialism, as the average Socialist practises it.  The average Socialist is the type of the eager but effeminate reformer of all ages, because he seeks to gain by machinery things nine tenths of the value of which to men is in gaining them for themselves.  Socialism is the attempt to invent conveniences for heroes, to pass a law that will make being a man unnecessary, to do away with sin by framing a world in which it would be worthless to do right because it would be impossible to do wrong.  It is a philosophy of helplessness, which, even if it succeeds in helplessly carrying its helplessness out—­in doing away with suffering, for instance—­can only do it by bringing to pass a man not alive enough to be capable of suffering, and putting him in a world where suffering and joy alike would be a bore to him.

But the main importance of Socialism in this connection lies in the fact that it does not confine itself to sociology.  It has become a complete philosophy of life, and can be seen penetrating with its subtle satire on human nature almost everything about us.  We have the cash register to educate our clerks into pure and honest character, and the souls of conductors can be seen being nurtured, mile after mile, by fare-recorders.