The preacher was treating of infidelity in connection with Socialist aspirations, and he observed that men could not live without faith in some ideal. Those men who reject the doctrine of immortality and of a world after this, delude themselves with visions of an earthly paradise. The Socialist's dream is nothing else; and his shibboleths of equality, fraternity and co-operation, are but a paraphrase of the Christian's “love one another.” Love is not necessary to the fulfilment of the Socialist's schemes than it is to the realisation of one's image of Heaven. A world in which there shall be no poor—in which each man shall receive according to his needs and work to the full measure of his capacities, having no individual advancement to expect from his industry, but content to see other men, less capable, fed out of the surplus of his earnings—what would this be but a paradise purged of all human passions—envy, jealousy, covetousness and sloth? Unless there were universal love, how could all the members of a Socialist community be expected to work to their utmost? And if every man did not work his best, so that the weak and the clumsy might live at the expense of the strong and the clever, how could the community exist? This was the substance of the sermon which Bismarck heard, and those words “the Socialist's Earthly Paradise” have remained fixed in his memory ever since as a terse demonstration as to the inanity of Socialism. State Socialism is of course another matter, and very early in life Bismarck came to the conclusion that the wise ruler must try to make himself popular by humoring the fancies of the people, whatever they may be, and however they may vary. If he can divert the people's fancies towards the objects of his own preference, so much the better, and it must be part of his business to endeavor to do this. But if he cannot lead, he must seem to lead while letting himself be pushed onward. “The people must be led without knowing it,” said Napoleon in a letter which he wrote to Fouché to decline Barrère's offer of pamphlets extolling the Emperor's policy. Bismarck has described universal suffrage as “the government of a house by its nursery;” but he added: “You can do anything with children if you play with them.”