In a rational socialism we may therefore see a long and widening avenue of progress, along which the improvement of mankind may be continued in a peaceful and gradual, yet most hopeful, sure, and effective way. Such a prospect offers the best remedy for the apathy and frivolity, cynicism and pessimism, which are now so prevalent; and it is the most effectual counteractive to restlessness, discontent, and all the evils and excesses of the revolutionary spirit. Under it the social forces will consciously and directly work for social ideals. The ideal will be made real, and might and right will be reconciled. The real forces which operate in modern history will be shaped by beneficent ideals, till, as Tennyson sings, Each man find his own in all men’s good, And all men work in noble brotherhood. May we not with Saint-Simon hope that the golden age is not behind but before us? ----- [1] _Inquiry into Socialism_, 3rd edition, p. 133. [2] See pp. 287, 288. [3] See p. 148. [4] _Kapital_, p. 790. APPENDIX After the Revolution of 1830 the Saint-Simonists were referred to in the French Chamber of Deputies as a sect who advocated community of goods and of women. The following communication in their defence was addressed to the Chamber by Bazard and Enfantin, October 1, 1830:— ‘The Saint-Simonists undoubtedly do profess ideas on the future of property and of women which are special to themselves, and which are connected with views entirely new and special on religion, authority, liberty—in short, on all the great problems which are now being agitated over the whole of Europe with so much disorder and violence; but these ideas are very different from the opinions which men attribute to them. ‘The system of community of goods is always understood to mean equal division among all the members of society, either of the means of production or of the fruit of the labour of all. ‘The Saint-Simonists reject this equal division of property, which in their eyes would constitute a greater violence, a more revolting injustice, than the unequal division, which was originally effected by force of arms, by conquest. ‘For they believe in the natural inequality of men, and regard this inequality as the very basis of association, as the indispensable condition of social order. ‘They reject the system of community of goods, for this would be a manifest violation of the first of all the moral laws, which it is their mission to teach, and which enjoins that in the future each man should be placed according to his capacity, and rewarded according to his work.