SOCIAL DREAMS 21 
he aimed at, so far as I can make out his thought, was, for all who were capable of it, Freedom for 
the exercise of their faculties, of their moral and spiritual nature. Voluntary organizations were 
his ideal, free from the tyranny of any man or any bodies of men, even from that of the Social 
Democratic Federation, or whatever other name the tyranny might carry. How it came about 
that he could ever have thought that a tyranny of the majority called the State would produce a 
condition of things better than our present condition, I do not know : unless it was that he 
allowed his kind heart and artistic temperament to get the better of his reason. Be that as it 
may, after wasting much time and strength in speaking at meetings, whose object was to destroy 
our present form of social arrangement, he came to a conclusion with which we may very 
generally agree. 'It seems to me,' he writes, 'that the real way to enjoy life is to accept all its 
necessary ordinary details and turn them into pleasures by taking interest in them : whereas 
modern civilization huddles them out of the way, has them done in a venial and slovenly 
manner till they become real drudgery which people can't help trying to avoid.' How true it is 
that anything is interesting to yourself and others in which you take an interest ! ' Whiles I think, 
as in a vision, of a decent community as a refuge from our mean squabbles and corrupt Society — 
but I am too old now, even if it were not dastardly to desert.' The Socialist Society broke into 
pieces, and Morris came to believe that before you can have Socialism you must liave persuaded 
the individual members of the nation to fit themselves, by self-denial and self-education and 
self-efFacement, to be Socialists. It has, I think, been well said, 'The Idea that a Socialistic 
Society is possible is an idea that lias to be reckoned with. Such a Society, conceived of as an 
actuality, is a mere chimasra.' 
I hardly know whether this short account of William Morris will have been of any 
interest to you. I can only hope so. Any way I don't think the reading of his life will turn any 
of you into Socialists or the advocates for a system of State control, of State Tyranny ; which means 
in a democratic country the delivery of a nation into the hands of a Bureaucracy elected by a majority 
of that nation, whose deadening weight would gradually destroy in us the best instincts of our 
human nature. You will all have noticed the difficult time which European nations are passing 
through. They owe it, I think, largely to this cause, their want of Freedom ; to the deadening 
effect of State action which takes away from the Individual his moral responsibility, and so blunts 
his conscience and hampers his intellect. Is it too much to say that to be just you must he free ? 
In our own country there is an unfortunate tendency in the same direction to the same kind of 
management, a tendency towards slavery to words. Every Session of Parliament lessens our 
freedom, and with it takes away some portion of our moral responsibility ; for you may be quite 
sure of this, that the conscience which decides in you and for you matters of right and wrong, 
very soon grows blunt if it be not used. 
When, as it is hoped by many, we have a larger army of permanent officials to decide 
everything for us from the cradle to the grave (and curiously enough, only last week someone 
suggested State funerals for us all), our sense of responsibility, the one sense which most 
distinguishes us from the other animals, will be gradually killed. There was, I believe, in the 
world of a hundred years ago a thinking power, a mother-wit, which is strangely but surely 
