The poor-law system, as revealed in the Norse laws, was that all the poorer men were bound to do a certain amount of work for their chief, like the payment of taxes at present, which amounts now to more than a month's work in the year. In return the chief was bound to see that they were insured against extreme-poverty or distress. They were free to accumulate wealth if they had the ability to do so, but their bargains and marriages had to be ratified by the chief in order to safeguard them from the follies of incapacity. When a man wished to resign this position of insurance against misfortune there was no objection to his independence, and he could do so on paying a small fee, and having a feast with the chief and witnesses. But if after that he played the fool, and his family came to naught, no one was responsible for them, as he had resigned his insurance. There was but one course left, a wide grave in the churchyard received the whole family alive, and only the one who survived longest had the right to live at the cost of his chief afterwards. Such was the price of communal support; and this decisive treatment, even in Christian times, ensured the sturdiness of the hardy Norseman, by effectively weeding the incapable. This was the practical working of the communal system which did not check ability, and which succeeded in our climate in past times. It needed a fuller organisation of penalties and obligations than our present individualism; and whether any communism could permanently succeed with less compulsion may gravely be doubted. In using the terms Socialism and Communism they are taken here in their widest sense, as referring to all the courses opposed to individualism. Such is the general usage of our language at present, and we cannot restrict these terms solely to extreme views, as some of their advocates would wish. Moreover, it is the influence of views on practical life that we are considering, and not an ideal state which never has been realised, and probably never can be put in practice.