"We want all the beauty that is here," said my friend, "and more also. And none of these distresses. We are here--we know not whence nor why--to want that and to struggle to get it, you and I and ten thousand others, thinly hidden from us by these luminous darknesses. We work, we pass--whither I know not, but out of our knowing. But we work--we are spurred to work. That yonder--those people are the spur--for us who cannot answer to any finer appeal. Each in our measure must do. And our reward? Our reward is our faith. Here is my creed to-night. I believe--out of me and the Good Will in me and my kind there comes a regenerate world--cleansed of suffering and sorrow. That is our purpose here--to forward that. It gives us work for all our lives. Why should we ask to know more? Our errors--our sins--to-night they seem to matter very little. If we stumble and roll in the mud, if we blunder against each other and hurt one another----" "We have to go on," said my friend, after a pause. We stood for a time in silence. One's own personal problems came and went like a ripple on the water. Even that whisky dealer's advertisement upon the southern bank became through some fantastic transformation a promise, an enigmatical promise flashed up the river reach in letters of fire. London was indeed very beautiful that night. Without hope she would have seemed not only as beautiful but as terrible as a black panther crouching on her prey. Our hope redeemed her. Beyond her dark and meretricious splendours, beyond her throned presence jewelled with links and points and cressets of fire, crowned with stars, robed in the night, hiding cruelties, I caught a moment's vision of the coming City of Mankind, of a city more wonderful than all my dreaming, full of life, full of youth, full of the spirit of creation.... CHAPTER II THE FUNDAMENTAL IDEA OF SOCIALISM