president's address — SECTION G (l.). 225 



are always ready to allow themselves to be cheated by phrases. The 

 question is — and I do not think that this question has ever been satis- 

 factorily answered — Will not the change produced under the supposed 

 conditions of economic equilibrium be merely a change in the direction 

 of the competition ? The stimulus to do the best for oneself and for 

 one's own, the stimulus even to get the better of one's neighbor, will 

 remain. Only, on the basis of equality of reward, the competitive 

 stimulus will work downwards rather than upwards. To suppose that 

 a system of equality of reward will be sufficient for all requirements 

 of the coUectivist state is surely one of the most extraordinary delusions 

 which has ever taken possession of the human mind. " The devil 

 take the hindmost " is not a maxim for a moral community or for a 

 moral being ; but there is, if possible, a still more objectionable maxim 

 ' — " The devil take the foremost." 



It is, however, I must confess, almost as idle a task to attempt to 

 disprove the coUectivist ideal as to attempt to prove it ; for its realisa- 

 tion, hke that of the New Jerusalem, is not open to verification in ex- 

 perience. But socialism, in entering the field of practical politics, 

 has itself become practical. It has been forced to surrender the pure 

 gospel of collectivism, and its visions of an immediate social transfor- 

 mation. The socialist party of the new era declares itself ready to 

 work for practical ends which are immediate and possible. The 

 revolutionary and ideal elements are put in the background, or they 

 are partly concealed and partly revealed in some abstract definition 

 of an objective to be realised in some distant future. John Stuart 

 Mill once said to the working men of London : " You need to be con- 

 vinced, first, that a revolution is necessary, and, next, that you are able 

 to carry it out." The practical socialist party of to-day seems to be 

 convinced, first, that a revolution in the old sense is neither necessary 

 nor probable, and next, that the way to the desired social reconstruction 

 is by the path of ordinary legislation. I do not think that it is a valid 

 objection to the discussion of the practical programme of the socialist 

 party that the ideal or objective of the party goes far beyond its im- 

 mediate performance or even promise. Mr. Bryan, the leader of the 

 American democratic party, said the other day, after advocating 

 nationalisation of railways : " I do not know that the country is ready 

 for public ownership. I believe in a great many things that I would 

 not put in a platform." The honesty of the Labor Party in framing 

 its objective is as least as great as that of one of America's representa- 

 tive men. In a free community the best way to treat extravagant 

 ideals is to let them bear the brunt of free discussion. There is a law 

 of natural selection, by which ideals which cannot be adapted to the 

 conditions of actual life perish, or live on only in the hopes of fanatics, 

 or in the fears of fools. But there is one thing to which valid objection 

 can be taken, and that is the tendency to use an abstract theory as a 

 practical principle of legislation in defiance or contempt of the evidence 

 of the facts. It may be a difficult question to determine in a given 

 case what a monopoly is, or when and for what reasons it ought to be 

 taken over by the State. But when a parliamentary commission (as 

 P 



