SOCIALISM. 577 



weakened by the sense of personal interest in their results being sub 

 divided. Even the social virtues engendered by this living in common 

 are apt to run off into mere reckless dissipation. One may think their 

 fruit poor, and their wine abominable ; but their maxim is none the 

 less, Eat and drink, for to-morrow we die. True, a man has a legal 

 right to lay by his share of the profits; but who does ? To do so 

 would be to fly in the face of public opinion.&quot; 



When with the fact that these Slavonic house-communi 

 ties under modern conditions of comparative peace and com 

 mercial activity, are dissolving, we join the fact that they 

 were formed during times of chronic war and remained 

 coherent during such times; when we add that such com 

 munities are still coherent among the Montenegrins, whose 

 active militancy continues ; when we add, further, that 

 maintenance of this combined living by American Indians 

 has similarly gone along with perpetual inter-tribal con 

 flicts; we are shown again, as before (465, 481, 804), 

 that in these small social unions, as in the larger social unions 

 including them, the subordination of the individual to the 

 group is great in proportion as the antagonism to other 

 groups is great. Be it in the family, the cluster of relatives, 

 the clan, or the nation, the need for joint action against 

 alien families, clans, nations, &c., necessitates the merging 

 of individual life in group-life. 



Hence the socialist theory and practice are normal in the 

 militant type of society, and cease to be normal as fast as the 

 society becomes predominantly industrial in its type. 



841. A state of universal brotherhood is so tempting an 

 imagination, and the existing state of competitive strife is so 

 full of miseries, that endeavours to escape from the last and 

 enter into the first are quite natural inevitable even. 

 Prompted by consciousness of the grievous inequalities of 

 condition around, those who suffer and those who sympathize 

 with them, seek to found what they think an equitable 

 social system. In the town, sight of a rich manufacturer 

 who ignores the hands working in his mill, does not excite in 



