Nineteenth-century socialism in its various forms, including the indurated formulæ of communism, has been a series of projects for the establishment of such collective controls, for the most part very sketchy projects from which the necessary factor of a sound psychological analysis was almost completely wanting. Primarily movements of protest and revolt against the blazing injustices arising out of the selfishly individualistic exploitation of the new and more productive technical and financial methods of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, they have been apt to go beyond the limits of reasonable socialisation in their demands and to minimise absurdly the difficulties and dangers of collective control. Indignation and impatience were their ruling moods and if they constructed little they exposed much. We are better able to measure the magnitude of the task before us because of the clearances and lessons achieved by these pioneer movements. _Chapter VII_ NO STABLE UTOPIA IS CONTEMPLATED This unified world towards which the efforts of the religious minority would direct human activities cannot be pictured for the reader as any static and stereotyped spectacle of happiness. Indeed one may doubt if such a thing as happiness is possible without steadily changing conditions involving continually enlarging and exhilarating opportunities. Mankind released from the pressure of population, the waste of warfare and the private monopolisation of the sources of wealth, will face the universe with a great and increasing surplus of will and energy. Change and novelty will be the order of life; each day will differ from its predecessor in its greater amplitude of interest. Life which was once routine, endurance and mischance, will become adventure and discovery. It will no longer be “the old, old story.” We have still barely emerged from among the animals in their struggle for existence. We live only in the early dawn of human self-consciousness and in the first awakening of the spirit of mastery. We believe that the persistent exploration of our outward and inward worlds by scientific and artistic endeavour will lead to developments of power and activity upon which at present we can set no limits nor give any certain form. Our antagonists are confusion of mind, want of courage, want of curiosity and want of imagination, indolence and spendthrift egotism. These are the enemies against which the Open Conspiracy arrays itself; these are the jailers of human freedom and achievement. _Chapter VIII_ THE OPEN CONSPIRACY MUST BE HETEROGENEOUS