The transformation of the Arcadian dreamer into the Utopist is a veritable menace to civilization. The ends that the Utopist proposes are often in themselves desirable and the evils that he denounces are real. But when we come to scrutinize critically his means, what we find is not a firm grip on the ascertained facts of human nature but what Bagehot calls the feeble idealities of the romantic imagination. Moreover various Utopists may come together as to what they wish to destroy, which is likely to include the whole existing social order; but what they wish to erect on the ruins of this order will be found to be not only in dreamland, but in different dreamlands. For with the elimination of the veto power from personality--the only power that can pull men back to some common centre--the ideal will amount to little more than the projection of this or that man’s temperament upon the void. In a purely temperamental world an affirmative reply may be given to the question of Euryalus in Virgil: “Is each man’s God but his own fell desire?” (_An sua cuique deus fit dira cupido?_) The task of the Socratic critic at the present time is, then, seen to consist largely in stripping idealistic disguises from egoism, in exposing what I have called sham spirituality. If the word spirituality means anything, it must imply, it should seem, some degree of escape from the ordinary self, an escape that calls in turn for effort according to the human law. Even when he is not an open and avowed advocate of a “wise passiveness,” the Rousseauistic idealist is only too manifestly not making any such effort--it would interfere with his passion for self-expression which is even more deeply rooted in him than his passion for saving society. He inclines like Rousseau to look upon every constraint[305] whether from within or from without as incompatible with liberty. A right definition of liberty is almost as important as a right definition of imagination and derives from it very directly. Where in our anarchical age will such a definition be found, a definition that is at once modern and in accord with the psychological facts? “A man has only to declare himself free,” says Goethe, “and he will at once feel himself dependent. If he ventures to declare himself dependent, he will feel himself free.” In other words he is not free to do whatever he pleases unless he wishes to enjoy the freedom of the lunatic, but only to adjust himself to the reality of either the natural or the human law. A progressive adjustment to the human law gives ethical efficiency, and this is the proper corrective of material efficiency, and not love alone as the sentimentalist is so fond of preaching. Love is another word that cries aloud for Socratic treatment.