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MY LIFE 



[Chap. 



we shall pass through a stage of true "individualism," in 

 which complete " equality of opportunity " will be established. 

 I have sufficiently explained this in my " Studies," vol. ii. 

 chap, xxviii. ; and if to this we add the broad scheme of 

 general education outlined by Mr. John Richardson in his 

 admirable little book, ''*How it can be done," we shall have 

 prepared the way for the rational society of the future. 

 Equality of opportunity is, as Herbert Spencer has shown 

 in his " Justice," the correlative of natural selection in human 

 society, and has thus a broad foundation in the laws of 

 nature. But Spencer himself did not follow out his principles 

 to their logical conclusion as I have done. 



Many good people to-day who are almost horror-struck 

 at hearing that any one they know is a socialist, would be 

 still more amazed if they knew how many of the very salt of 

 the earth belong (or did belong) to this despised and much 

 dreaded body of thinkers. Grant Allen, one of the most 

 intellectual and many-sided men of our time, was one of us ; 

 so is Sir Oliver Lodge, one of our foremost students of 

 physical science ; and Professor Karl Pearson, a great mathe- 

 matical evolutionist. Among the clergy we have the Revs. 

 John Clifford, R. C. Fillingham, and many others among the 

 Christian socialists, who are as much socialists as any of us. 

 Among men of university training or of high literary ability 

 we have H. M. Hyndman, Edward Carpenter, J. A. Hobson, 

 Sydney Webb, Hubert Bland, H. S. Salt, J. C. Kenworthy, 

 Morrison-Davidson, and many others. Of poets there are 

 Gerald Massey and Sir Lewis Morris. The labour members 

 of Parliament are almost all socialists ; while Margaret 

 Macmillan, the Countess of Warwick, and many less known 

 women are earnest workers for the cause. 



I should almost think that Mrs. Humphry Ward was a 

 socialist at heart or as an ideal, or she could not have set 

 forth its principles and the arguments for it so well as she 

 has done in " Marcella." But the weak and illogical con- 

 clusion of that and some other books caused me to write to 

 Grant Allen, urging him to write a thorough socialistic story. 



