In the circumstances, with this very doubtful weight of inertia alone on his side, that man may very easily be suspected of quixotic candour, who at this late hour of the day pretends to stand up in face of the approaching wind, not only to resist it, but also to beat it down. And yet this is what the present writer proposes to do, provided only he can demonstrate the validity of his standpoint in a sufficient number of convincing ways to emulate that fine gentle rain which ultimately beats down any wind. Moreover, in order to do this, it will not be necessary to examine the proposals of Socialism and Communism in detail, but simply to concentrate upon their basic principles, and to show how entirely untenable are the very first positions they take up. Stated in the fairest possible way, their position is as follows:-- The leading Socialist and Communist thinkers are men as a rule whose hearts have been moved by the spectacle of sorrow and hardship which is the lot of a large number of their fellow-creatures on earth; and they are earnestly desirous so to modify the organisation of society as to render that burden of sorrow and hardship lighter for the mass of mankind. They see all about them inequalities of the crudest kind, sharp contrasts, and abysmal chasms, and they wish to achieve greater evenness among men.--Why?--Not because the spectacle of mankind thus evened up will necessarily be more picturesque or more harmonious to behold; but because on the whole it will be less heartrending, less revolting, less inequitable. [p98] They detect in society, as it is at present constituted, an element which they maintain has no business to be there, an element which they honestly believe is not human; and they feel confident of being able to eliminate it if only they are allowed to effect certain readjustments and re-arrangements of the whole which will radically change the relation of every member of the community to every other member. This element, which the Socialist and Communist detect in modern society and which they wish to eliminate because it is not human, is Violence. According to the present writer’s belief this is, in a few words, a fair statement, if not the fairest possible statement, of the Socialist and Communist’s position. Assuming at all events that it is correct, it is now possible to examine it and to call attention to the amount of error it contains. For, let the Socialist and Communist say what they will, let them wish rather to substitute the word Predatoriness, or Oppression, or Exploitation, or Slavery, for the word Violence, or for the particular quality in modern society which they would fain eliminate, it does not signify much. All these words in their essence are reducible to the one notion Violence, and Violence we shall therefore name the feature that Socialists and Communists propose to remove from human communities, and which we propose now to examine.