THE VALUE OF SOCIALIST IDEALS 479 



between nations and between individuals of the same nation, but 

 within the soul of the individual himself. And we say that 

 Socialism, in so far as it aims at reducing the amount and in- 

 tensity of conflict in the world, not only infringes the primordial 

 law of progress, but destroys, or at any rate greatly diminishes, 

 the value of life. It cannot be otherwise ; as we have said, the 

 continuity of the condition under which alone life, as we know it, 

 is possible is assured by the very fact of Ufe itself, which is 

 synonymous with expansion. In the measure, therefore, that 

 we restrict the operation of the primordial condition of life, we 

 diminish hfe both in quantity and in intensity. The value of 

 hfe is Ultimately bound up with conflict, as conflict is the chief 

 means of expansion, and expansion is the first necessity of life. 



The breath of pessimism — ^nay, of nihilism — is breathed forth 

 by Sociahsm. And when we come to consider more closely some 

 elements of social evolution, this spirit of pessimism will not 

 astonish us. As those forces which have been most actively 

 associated with the building up and expansion of Western 

 civiUsation gradually diminish in strength, a contrast reveals 

 itself ever more and more clearly between the world in which we 

 hve, which we are, and the world of our ideals. The force which 

 has contributed most to the evolution of Western civilisation — 

 the ethical aspect of that civilisation apart — -is, as we saw in the 

 second part, Christianity. But the hold of Christianity over 

 civihsation has been steadily diminishing during the last hundred 

 and fifty years. The Keformation, which destroyed the imity 

 of the Church, was the first grave symptom of the disintegration 

 of Christianity in Europe ; and the events which have followed, 

 the virulent attacks of the French Revolution, and the less 

 virulent but more profound imdermining of old faiths by modern 

 science — all these were but a logical sequence of the Protestant 

 Eeformation ; which latter, considered as a factor in the disin- 

 tegration of Christianity, and therefore, indirectly, in the dis- 

 integration of that civilisation which was mainly the work of 



