382 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



thereto in nearly all cases by a contemplation of the miseries 

 of life and an ardent desire to ameliorate its adverse condi- 

 tions. Poets who have given us many such pictures are the 

 first to point out the difference between the ideal and the 

 actual, the real and the visionary. They are not deceived by 

 their own compositions, nor do they wish to deceive their 

 readers. They tell us plainly that the Eldorado sought will 

 never be found on earth, that when men dream of some age 

 in this life in which evil is subdued and right and good 

 become universal they are in error, pursue phantoms, and 

 miss the true meaning and intent of life. Strange to say, 

 Mr. Morris himself comes apparently to some such conclu- 

 sion. In his opening poem, in the work already referred to, 

 he gives a pathetic account of certain men who set sail to find 

 the earthly pai'adise, and after many years of wanderings, 

 hardships, and (to some of the number) death, came when 

 very old men to a far land, told their tale, and asked leave to 

 die there. Mr. Morris says, speaking in the character of 

 the wanderer, — 



Masters, I have to tell a tale of woe, 

 A tale of folly and of wasted life, 



and this, I take it, will be the sad experience of any who may 

 be induced to adopt the plan of life shadowed forth by Mr. 

 Morris in his "Socialism Triumphant." But let us assume 

 that it is established on his own basis. "What then? Life 

 would stagnate and become listless, — 



Quiet as Carmel, where the lilies live. 



But is this animal life ? In the cells of the animal body there 

 is, physiologists tell us, ceaseless activity. Every orb in the 

 universe, every atom of the earth, tell the same tale. " No- 

 thing there is motionless." How can man with his infinite 

 desires be content ? He is restless ever ; and when these 

 reformers seek repose and a dreamy kind of happiness as the 

 highest good attainable in this life they fall, it appears to me, 

 into a fatal error. 



If I am correct in the view I have taken of these several 

 schemes — and I am inclined to think that I am — ^then high 

 ideals are delusive, and of little practical use in real life. 

 They are not adapted to perverse human nature, ill accord 

 with what we know of business realities, and cannot be ac- 

 cepted as precedents without the gravest responsibilities being 

 incurred. Our place is in tliis world as man, we must 

 remember, and nothing more — 



Man who, as man conceiving, hopes and fears, 

 And craves and deprecates, and loves and loathes, 



, . . . Till death touch his eyes. 



