In the first place, such a change generally assumes as its political complement the most thoroughly democratic organisation of society. The early socialism of Owen and Saint-Simon was marked by not a little of the autocratic spirit; but the tendency of the present socialism is more and more to ally itself with the most advanced democracy. Socialism, in fact, claims to be the economic complement of democracy, maintaining that without a fundamental economic change political privilege has neither meaning nor value. In the second place, socialism naturally goes with an unselfish or altruistic system of ethics. The most characteristic feature of the old societies was the exploitation of the weak by the strong under the systems of slavery, serfdom, and wage-labour. Under the socialistic _régime_ it is the privilege and duty of the strong and talented to use their superior force and richer endowments in the service of their fellow-men without distinction of class, or nation, or creed. Whatever our opinion may be of the wisdom or practicability of their theories, history proves that socialists have been ready to sacrifice wealth, social position, and life itself, for the cause which they have adopted. In the third place, socialists maintain that, under their system and no other, can the highest excellence and beauty be realised in industrial production and in art; whereas under the present system beauty and thoroughness are alike sacrificed to cheapness, which is a necessity of successful competition. Lastly, the socialists refuse to admit that individual happiness or freedom or character would be sacrificed under the social arrangements they propose. They believe that under the present system a free and harmonious development of individual capacity and happiness is possible only for the privileged minority, and that socialism alone can open up a fair opportunity for all. They believe, in short, that there is no opposition whatever between socialism and individuality rightly understood, that these two are complements the one of the other, that in socialism alone may every individual have hope of free development and a full realisation of himself.