In a word, the man who desires to re-establish property as an institution normal to most citizens in the State is _working against the grain_ of our existing Capitalist society, while a man who desires to establish Socialism--that is Collectivism--is working _with_ the grain of that society. The first is like a physician who should say to a man whose limbs were partially atrophied from disuse: "Do this and that, take such and such exercise, and you will recover the use of your limbs." The second is like a physician who should say: "You cannot go on as you are. Your limbs are atrophied from lack of use. Your attempt to conduct yourself as though they were not is useless and painful; you had better make up your mind to be wheeled about in a fashion consonant to your disease." The Physician is the Reformer, his Patient the Proletariat. It is not the purpose of this book to show how and under what difficulties a condition of well-divided property might be restored and might take the place (even in England) of that Capitalism which is now no longer either stable or tolerable; but for the purposes of contrast and to emphasise my argument I will proceed, before showing how the Collectivist unconsciously makes for the Servile State, to show what difficulties surround the Distributive solution and why, therefore, the Collectivist solution appeals so much more readily to men living under Capitalism. * * * * * If I desire to substitute a number of small owners for a few large ones in some particular enterprise, how shall I set to work? I might boldly confiscate and redistribute at a blow. But by what process should I choose the new owners? Even supposing that there was some machinery whereby the justice of the new distribution could be assured, how could I avoid the enormous and innumerable separate acts of injustice that would attach to general redistributions? To say "none shall own" and to confiscate is one thing; to say "all should own" and apportion ownership is another. Action of this kind would so disturb the whole network of economic relations as to bring ruin at once to the whole body politic, and particularly to the smaller interests indirectly affected. In a society such as ours a catastrophe falling upon the State from outside might indirectly do good by making such a redistribution possible. But no one working from within the State could provoke that catastrophe without ruining his own cause. If, then, I proceed more slowly and more rationally and canalise the economic life of society so that small property shall gradually be built up within it, see against what forces of inertia and custom I have to work to-day in a Capitalist society!