Thomas Davidson[6] was the occasion rather than the cause of the founding of the Fabian Society. His socialism was ethical and individual rather than economic and political. He was spiritually a descendant of the Utopians of Brook Farm and the Phalanstery, and what he yearned for was something in the nature of a community of superior people withdrawn from the world because of its wickedness, and showing by example how a higher life might be led. Probably his Scotch common sense recoiled from definitely taking the plunge: I am not aware that he ever actually proposed that his disciples should form a self-contained community. In a lecture to the New York Fellowship of the New Life, he said, "I shall set out with two assumptions, first, that human life does not consist in material possession; and second, that it does consist in free spiritual activity, of which in this life at least material possession is an essential condition." There is nothing new in this: it is the common basis of all religions and ethical systems. But it needs to be re-stated for each generation, and so stated as to suit each environment. At the time that I am describing Davidson's re-statement appealed to the small circle of his adherents, though the movement which he started had results that he neither expected nor approved. I have now indicated the currents of thought which contributed to the formation of the Fabian Society, so far as I can recover them from memory and a survey of the periodical literature of the period. I have not included the writings of Ruskin, Socialist in outlook as some of them undoubtedly are, because I think that the value of his social teachings was concealed from most of us at that time by reaction against his religious mediævalism, and indifference to his gospel of art. Books so eminently adapted for young ladies at mid-Victorian schools did not appeal to modernists educated by Comte and Spencer. FOOTNOTES: [1] The words Communism and Socialism were interchangeable at that period, e.g. the "Manifesto of the Communist Party," by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, 1848. [2] "Political Economy," Book II, Chap. i, Sec. 3. [3] William Morris attributed to Mill his conversion to Socialism. See J.W. Mackail's "Life," Vol. II, p. 79. [4] No. 1, June, 1883, monthly, 1d.; continued until 1891. [5] Born 1847. Founded the Guild of St. Matthew 1877 and edited its organ, the "Church Reformer," till 1895. Member of the English Land Restoration League, originally the Land Reform Union, from 1883. Member of the London School Board 1888-1904; of the London County Council since 1907.