Need we say that no new movement like socialism can be understood or appreciated without some measure of the open mind? In the course of history it has been proved over and over again that established ideas and institutions are not always in the right in every respect, and that novel opinions, though presented in extravagant and intemperate language, are not always entirely wrong. Even the most prejudiced reader will do well to consider that a cause which now numbers millions of intelligent adherents, for which men have died and gladly suffered imprisonment and privation of every kind, may contain elements of truth and of well-justified hope for the future. Above all things, it is essential to remember that socialism is not a stereotyped system of dogma. It is a movement which springs out of a vast and only partially shapen reality. It is therefore living and liable to change. It has a history on which we can look back; but it is above all things a force of the present and the future, and its influence in the future for good or evil will depend on how we the men of the present relate ourselves to it. On the one hand, it would be a great wrong if we encouraged vain and delusive expectations; but it would be a wrong even greater, on the other hand, if from whim or prejudice or pessimism we did anything that might be an obstacle to truth and progress. In a subject so momentous the only right course is to eschew passion and prejudice, and to follow truth with goodwill and an open mind. The word ‘socialism’ appears to have been first used in _The Poor Man’s Guardian_ in 1833. In 1835, a society, which received the grandiloquent name of the Association of all Classes of all Nations, was founded under the auspices of Robert Owen; and the words socialist and socialism became current during the discussions which arose in connection with it.[1] As Owen and his school had no esteem for the political reform of the time, and laid all emphasis on the necessity of social improvement and reconstruction, it is obvious how the name came to be recognised as suitable and distinctive. The term was soon afterwards borrowed from England, as he himself tells us, by a distinguished French writer, Reybaud, in his well-known work the _Réformateurs modernes_, in which he discussed the theories of Saint-Simon, Fourier, and Owen. Through Reybaud it soon gained wide currency on the Continent, and is now the accepted world-historic name for one of the most remarkable movements of the nineteenth century.