It is so recently as 1833 that the world first heard the word Socialism.[18] It appeared then, with the vaguest implications and the most fluctuating definition, as a general term for a disconnected series of protests against the extreme theories of Individualism and Individualist Political Economy; against the cruel, race-destroying industrial spirit that then dominated the world. Of these protests the sociological suggestions and experiments of Robert Owen were most prominent in the English community, and he it is, more than any other single person, whom we must regard as the father of Socialism. But in France ideas essentially similar were appearing about such movements and personalities as those of Saint Simon, Proudhon and Fourier. They were part of a vast system of questionings and repudiations, political doubts, social doubts, hesitating inquiries and experiments. [18] It was probably first used in the _Poor Man's Guardian_ in that year. See _The Life of Francis Place_, by Graham Wallas, p. 353. It is only to be expected that early Socialism should now appear as not only an extremely imperfect but a very inconsistent system of proposals. Its value lay not so much in its plans as in its hopeful and confident denials. It had hold of one great truth; it moved one great amendment to the conception of practical equality the French Revolution had formulated, and that was its clear indication of the evil of unrestricted private property and of the necessary antagonism of the interests of the individual to the common-weal, of "Wealth against Commonwealth," that went with that. While most men had to go propertyless in a world that was privately owned, the assertion of equality was an empty lie. For the rest, primordial Socialism was entirely sketchy and experimental. It was wild as the talk of school-boys. It disregarded the most obvious needs. It did not provide for any principle of government, or for the maintenance of collective thought and social determination, it offered no safeguards and guarantees for even the most elementary privacies and freedoms; it was extraordinarily non-constructive. It was extreme in its proposed abolition of the home, and it flatly ignored the huge process of transition needed for a change so profound and universal. The early Socialism was immediately millennial. It had no patience. The idea was to be made into a definite project forthwith; Fourier drew up his compact scheme, arranged how many people should live in each _phalange_ and so forth, and all that remained to do, he thought, was to sow _phalanges_ as one scatters poppy seed. With him it was to be Socialism by contagion, with many of his still hastier contemporaries it was to be Socialism by proclamation. All the evils of society were to crumble to ruins like the Walls of Jericho at the first onset of the Great Idea.