Socialism, as I have stated it thus far, and as it is commonly stated, would give economic liberty to men and women alike, it would save them from the cruel urgency of need, and so far it would enormously enlarge freedom, but it does not guarantee them political or intellectual liberty. That I frankly admit, and accept as one of the incompletenesses of contemporary Socialism. I conceive, therefore, as I shall explain at length in a later chapter, that it is necessary to supplement such Socialism as is currently received by certain new propositions. But to admit that Socialism does not guarantee freedom, is not to admit that Socialism will destroy it. It is possible, given certain conditions, for men to be nearly absolutely free in speech, in movement, in conduct; enormously free, that is, as compared with our present conditions, in a Socialist State established upon the two great propositions I have formulated in Chapters III. and IV. So that the statement that Socialism will destroy freedom is a baseless one of no value as a general argument against the Socialist idea. § 5. _Socialism would reduce life to one monotonous dead level!_ This in a world in which the majority of people live in cheap cottages, villa residences and tenement houses, read halfpenny newspapers and wear ready-made clothes! _Socialism would destroy Art, Invention and Literature._ I do not know why this objection is made, unless it be that the objectors suppose that artists will not create, inventors will not think, and no one write or sing except to please a wealthy patron. Without his opulent smile, where would they be? Well, do not let us be ungrateful; the arts owe much to patronage. Go to Venice, go to Florence, and you will find a glorious harvest of pictures and architecture, sown and reaped by a mercantile plutocracy. But then in Rome, in Athens, you will find an equal accumulation made under very different conditions. Reach a certain phase of civilization, a certain leisure and wealth, and art will out, however the wealth may be distributed. In certain sumptuous directions art flourishes now, and would certainly flourish less in a Socialist State; in the gear of ostentatious luxury, in private furniture of all sorts, in palace building, in the exquisite confections of costly feminine adornment, in the luxurious binding of books, in the cooking of larks, in the distinguished portraiture of undistinguished persons, in the various refinements of prostitution, in the subtle accommodations of mystic theology, in jewellery. It is quite conceivable that in such departments Socialism will discourage and limit æsthetic and intellectual effort. But no mercantile plutocracy could ever have produced a Gothic cathedral, a folk-lore, a gracious natural type of cottage or beautiful clothing for the common people, and no mercantile plutocracy will ever tolerate a literature of power. If the coming of Socialism destroys arts, it will also