THE COMING OF SOCIALISM 95 



sufferance ; having no right to impress his own will on 

 any object he would not be able to express himself in any 

 act : he would have no sphere for his activities, no 

 trust or responsibilities, no duties, and, therefore, no 

 opportunity of realising his personality or learning 

 virtue. 



The State if, indeed, such a community of mere 

 dependants could be called a State might be benevolent 

 to him, feeding, clothing, and housing him, satisfying 

 every want as it arose, or forestalling them like a mother 

 with her babe. But as man reaches manhood he develops 

 other wants than these. He wants to rule his own life, 

 to exercise his own powers, to pursue his own ends. The 

 State might engage him ; but it would be in labour not 

 his "own," upon objects not his own, and in the service 

 of purposes not his own ; for the State has said of all 

 things, "Not Thine, but Mine." In short, if Socialism 

 is verily the extinction of all individual property, men 

 would be reduced into things. This result is concealed 

 from the advocate of such extinction by the fact that he 

 unconsciously retains the sense and rights of individual 

 ownership. Indeed, he makes every citizen heir to the 

 good of the whole State. But this is either to reinstate 

 Individualism in an aggravated form, or it is to rise above 

 the distinction of "Mine and Thine" from which the 

 whole controversy has originated. Private property may, 

 as is alleged, give occasion for cupidity, competition, 

 aggression, the untold miseries of extreme poverty, and 

 the no less tragedy of unjust, profligate, and irresponsible 

 wealth. Nevertheless it is the condition of the opposite 

 virtues of loyal service, of justice, of generosity, of 

 manhood itself. The means of doing what is right are 



