The third direction is towards the developing conceptions of Socialism. And it must be confessed at once that these, as they emerge steadily and methodically from mere generalities and confusions, do present themselves as being in many aspects, novel and untried. They are as untested, and in many respects as alarming, as steam traction or iron shipping were in 1830. They display, clearly and unambiguously, principles already timidly admitted in practice and sentiment to-day, but as yet admitted only confusedly and amidst a cloud of contradictions. Essentially the Socialist position is a denial of property in human beings; not only must land and the means of production be liberated from the multitude of little monarchs among whom they are distributed, to the general injury and inconvenience, but women and children, just as much as men and things, must cease to be owned. Socialism indeed proposes to abolish altogether the patriarchal family amidst whose disintegrating ruins we live, and to raise women to an equal citizenship with men. It proposes to give a man no more property in a woman than a woman has in a man. To stupid people who cannot see the difference between a woman and a thing, the abolition of the private ownership of women takes the form of having “wives in common,” and suggests the Corroboree. It is obviously nothing of the sort. It is the recognition in theory of what in many classes is already the fact,—the practical equality of men and women in a civilized state. It is quite compatible with a marriage contract of far greater stringency than that recognized throughout Christendom to-day. Now what sort of contract will the Socialist state require for marriage? Here again there are perfectly clear and simple principles. Socialism states definitely what almost everybody recognizes nowadays with greater or less clearness, and that is the concern of the State for children. The children people bring into the world can be no more their private concern entirely, than the disease germs they disseminate or the noises a man makes in a thin-floored flat. Socialism says boldly the State is the Over-Parent, the Outer-Parent. People rear children for the State and the future; if they do that well, they do the whole world a service, and deserve payment just as much as if they built a bridge or raised a crop of wheat; if they do it unpropitiously and ill, they have done the world an injury. Socialism denies altogether the right of any one to beget children carelessly and promiscuously, and for the prevention of disease and evil births alike the Socialist is prepared for an insistence upon intelligence and self-restraint quite beyond the current practice. At present we deal with all that sort of thing as an infringement of private proprietary rights; the Socialist holds it is the world that is injured.