Under these influences, the word socialism has come to contract a new meaning, and is now generally defined in a way that would exclude the very theories it was originally invented to denote. Its political element--its demand on the public power in behalf of the labouring class--is taken to be the pith and essence of the system. Mr. Cairnes, for example, says that the circumstance which distinguishes socialism from all other modes of social speculation is its invocation of the powers of the State, and he finds fault with Mr. Mill for describing himself in his "Autobiography" as a socialist, merely because his ideal of ultimate improvement had more in common with the ideal of socialistic reformers than with the views of those who in contradistinction would be called orthodox. The passage from the "Autobiography" runs as follows:--"While we repudiated with the greatest energy that tyranny of society over the individual which most socialistic systems are supposed to involve, we yet looked forward to a time when society will no longer be divided into the idle and the industrious; when the rule that they who do not work shall not eat will be applied, not to paupers only, but impartially to all; when the division of the produce of labour, instead of depending, as in so great a degree it now does, on the accident of birth, will be made by concert on an acknowledged principle of justice; and when it will no longer either be, or be thought to be, impossible for human beings to exert themselves strenuously in procuring benefits which are not to be exclusively their own, but to be shared with the society they belong to." ("Autobiography," pp. 231-232). On this passage Mr. Cairnes observes:--"If to look forward to such a state of things as an ideal to be striven for is socialism, I at once acknowledge myself a socialist; but it seems to me that the idea which 'socialism' conveys to most minds is not that of any particular form of society to be realized at a future time when the character of human beings and the conditions of human life are widely different from what they now are, but rather certain modes of action, more especially the employment of the powers of the State for the instant accomplishment of ideal schemes, which is the invariable attribute of all projects generally regarded as socialistic. So entirely is this the case that it is common to hear any proposal which is thought to involve an undue extension of the power of the State branded as socialistic, whatever be the object it may seek to accomplish. After all, the question is one of nomenclature merely; but people are so greatly governed by words that I cannot but regret that a philosophy of social life with which I so deeply sympathize should be prejudiced by verbal associations fitted, as it seems to me, only to mislead." ("Leading Principles of Political Economy," p. 316.)