And the fascination of their point of view! “A world full of want and misery and cruelty, by reason, most of all, of the wasteful war of competition between man and his brother man in the wilderness of anarchical production in which the people blindly wander; while over against them, awaiting their occupation, is a promised land of peace and plenty, where poverty and want, and their attendant miseries and tendencies to moral evil, will be unknown, if men can but be induced to cross the Jordan which separates lawless competition from intelligent and provident co-operation.” How quick and sure is such an appeal to the human heart! It is the world-old charm, charming men anew. A royal road at last, a wide gate and a broad way leading unto life! The way of salvation made easy! It is the Patriarchs again trusting to their sacrifices; the old Jews to circumcision and the blood of Abraham; the spiritually blinded Christians to their outward symbols; and all of them deaf to that truest word of all philosophy, “The kingdom of heaven is within you.” It is so easy to conceive of some change in outward conditions, some “remedy,” some “solution” for the ills from which we suffer, and which, having been accepted, would lift life to a plane of harmonious and frictionless movement, and set us free henceforth to follow our own wills and purposes and desires. And it is so supremely difficult to realize that the way of life lies not that way at all, not in the pursuit of happiness nor in the fulfilment of our own wills, but in realizing that the universe is governed by laws of right and justice and truth, and in bringing our wills into subjection to those laws and our actions into harmony with them. One of these laws, I take it, is the law “the universal brotherhood of man.” And it is by the practical denial of this law in the dealing of men with their fellow-men that much of the world’s cruelest misery has been caused, and much of the seed of terrible retribution has been sown. It was their firm belief in the truth of brotherhood which gave to the words of the Socialists their greatest strength and charm. It was plainly fundamental to all their views. Ignorance and prejudice and unphilosophical thinking warped their expressed ideas and made their speeches very human, but yet in them all was this saving hold on truth, a living belief in the solidarity of the human race and in the responsibilities which grow out of the bond of universal kinship.