I
 
 fl^^ 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS 
 AN ADDRESS BY J. W. M ACKAIL 
 
 HAMMERSMITH PUBLISHING SOCIETY 
 
 RIVER HOUSE, HAMMERSMITH 
 
 MDCCCCHI
 
 This Address was given in the William Morris 
 
 Labour Church, at Leek, the I^fth of Odober, 
 
 MDCCCCIL
 
 Hx 
 
 I TN GIVING THE FIRST OF THE AN- 
 il^ X nual Memorial Ledlures which have been 
 ^^ instituted to commemorate Mr. Larner Sugden 
 i in the town where he lived and worked, it would 
 ^^ be proper that some portion at least of my ad- 
 dress should be devoted to Mr. Sugden himself. 
 It was chiefly through his energy and devotion 
 that this Church was founded six years ago, 
 and that it has been sustained since. His early 
 death must in any case have been a severe loss 
 for this town and neighbourhood, to the cause 
 of labour, to the cause of Socialism, and to the 
 still wider cause of justice and humanity. That 
 loss is however the greater, that, by what I 
 gather was the unanimous testimony of all who 
 knew him, he was a human being of rare tem- 
 per and accomplishment. His influence, so I ap- 
 prehend, survives here less in the many build- 
 ings with which in the exercise of his daily 
 work he adorned this town and district, than 
 in the example which he set, and continues to 
 set, in the minds of his friends, of a life lived 
 single-heartedly and courageously, pursuing 
 truth and right, carelessof self-interest, and with 
 an eye always fixed upon the high ideals which 
 those are unhappy who have never known, and 
 which those who have known but failed to fol- 
 low are unhappier still. 
 
 3 
 
 G4.6777
 
 But, as no doubt was known to those who 
 asked me to give this address, I had not the 
 privilege of your late townsman's acquaintance, 
 and was never brought into contact with him, 
 except for one brief exchange of correspondence 
 some years ago. The task and the pleasure of 
 commemorating him personally must lie with 
 others who are qualified to do so. It is another 
 and a greater personality with which this town 
 is associated in my mind, that of one whom 
 he and all of us would own as master, William 
 Morris himself. He was the real founder of 
 this Church, which was set up to his memory 
 and bears his name: and it is of him that I 
 desire to begin by speaking. By a not inappro- 
 priate coincidence, the date fixed for this annual 
 celebration, the birthday of Mr. Sugden, is only 
 removed by three days from the date of Morris' 
 death; and it is very fitting that their names 
 should be joined in one commemoration. 
 
 I do not indeed propose to sketch Morris' 
 life or to set forth his dodlrine. With his life 
 I have dealt elsewhere, both in the detailed 
 biography which I have written, and which I 
 am glad to say is now issued in a form that 
 does not remove it beyond the reach of persons 
 of fairly moderate means ; and in a summarised 
 sketch published as a penny pamphlet by the 
 
 4
 
 Independent Labour Party. To this last I 
 would refer any one who desires to make hi mself 
 familiar with the main outlines of Morris' life 
 and the central dodlrines of his belief: though 
 with these dod;rines I hope most if not all of 
 this audience are familiar. But Morris' connec- 
 tion with the staple industry of Leek, a quarter 
 of a century ago, is an episode in his life which 
 is in itself of exceptional interest : and it so 
 happens that the two years during which he 
 spent weeks and months together here are also 
 years of special importance in his whole life: 
 for it was in those years that the change began 
 which turned him from a poet into a preacher, 
 and from a Radical by association and impulse 
 into a Socialist by hardly-won and steadily-held 
 convidlion. The parting of the ways was not 
 sudden. It cannot be fixed down to any par- 
 ticular date: and indeed it was not until some 
 years after he had ceased to work here with 
 Mr. Wardle that he turned his mind at all de- 
 finitely towards what became the politics and 
 the religion of his later life. But in the life of 
 the individual, as in the life of the community 
 or nation, the social revolution is not an adt, 
 but a process ; a process whose roots go deep 
 into an unseen past, and whose growth lasts as 
 long as life itself. Nor is it a process in which 
 
 5
 
 any man, or any community, can stop short 
 somewhere and say, "I have attained the goal." 
 The horizon recedes before our advance. The 
 Socialist ideal will always remain an ideal ; and 
 there is a sense in which we might say that 
 fully realised Socialism is a contradiction in 
 terms. " My kingdom is not of this world," said 
 the greatest of Socialists. Yet it was into the 
 world that he charged his followers to go out 
 and preach the Gospel of that kingdom to every 
 creature. 
 
 The period during w^hich Morris spent so 
 much of his time at Leek that he might almost 
 be called a resident here began in 1875 and 
 went on into 1877. That he came to this rather 
 than to any other centre of the weaving and 
 dyeing industry was owing to the mere accident 
 of Mr. Thomas Wardle being well know^n to 
 him as the brother-in-law of his own London 
 manager. He had found his work as a designer 
 and manufacturer of textiles hampered from 
 the first by the bad colours of the wool or silk 
 in which they were executed. Not only were the 
 colours actually in use bad, but good colours 
 could not be got. The dyeing industry, since 
 the introdud;ion of the earlier anilines, had sunk 
 to the lowest level known in history. With 
 hardly any exceptions the colours procurable 
 6
 
 were both crude and fugitive ; nor did it mend 
 matters that, since the golden age of adultera- 
 tion had harnessed science to the wheels of 
 profit-making, they were also for the most part 
 impure. More especially the art of dyeing in 
 indigo, for which this distrid: had been cele- 
 brated a century ago, had been completely lost. 
 It had to be recovered through experiments 
 made from old books and from the recolled;ions 
 of some of the older workmen. 
 
 During those two years Morris was more 
 occupied with problems of indigo and madder 
 than with social questions ; and he sought re- 
 laxation from his daily work, and exercise for 
 the higher powers of his mind, less in politics 
 than in poetry. The epic of " Sigurd the Vol- 
 sung," his largest, and, in the opinion of some, 
 his greatest achievement in literature,was writ- 
 ten during that time, and great parts of it actu- 
 ally in this town. His Saturdays and Sundays 
 used to be spent, according to the state of the 
 weather or the fancy of the moment, in writing 
 poetry (sometimes with fingers so stiff from the 
 blue-vat that they would hardly hold the pen), 
 or in excursions to the more romantic or his- 
 torical places within reach — Lichfield, or Ash- 
 bourne, or Dovedale, and whenever the chance 
 offered, in fishing, the one out-door or in-door 
 
 7
 
 sport in which he was an enthusiast. But both 
 in his work as a dyer of yarns and in his work 
 as a maker of verses it is easy to trace at that 
 time an increasing interest in what are called 
 social questions, and an increasing sense of 
 their importance. He was beginning to study 
 the art and craft of life itself on the amplest 
 scale. Perhaps there may be some present who 
 remember his heroic and romantic figure in 
 those days ; the noble tempestuous head with 
 its grey eyes and delicate mouth, the blouse and 
 sabots, the hands dyed deep in indigo. What- 
 ever may be the chances that await Leek and its 
 townsfolk, they are not likely to see so great a 
 man moving among them on his daily work 
 again. But if there are any here whose recollec- 
 tion goes back to those days, they can hardly 
 have known or suspedted then the inner work- 
 ings of his spirit, or the strange seas of thought 
 throughw^hichhewasvoyaging, chiefly in silence 
 and alone. " Delightful work," he wrote from 
 here, to a friend in London, of his daily em- 
 ployment ; "hard for the body and easy for the 
 mind." So it was for him : in spite of all the 
 wretchedness that attaches to modern industry, 
 his work was always his unfailing solace and 
 relaxation. But how difficult and profound a 
 life he was living with his mind all the while, 
 8
 
 we may partly guess from his more intimate 
 letters, and even as clearly from passages in his 
 poetry. Let me quote briefly from both. 
 
 " I am sure," he wrote from Leek in March, 
 1876, to a friend who was in great trouble and 
 perplexity, "that though I have many hopes 
 and pleasures, or at least strong ones, and that 
 though my life is dear to me, so much as I seem 
 to have to do, I would gladly give them away, 
 hopes and pleasures, one by one or all together, 
 and my life at last, for you, for my friendship, 
 for my honour, for the world. I claim not to be 
 separated from those that are heavy-hearted, 
 only because I am well in health and full of 
 pleasant work and eager about it, and not op- 
 pressed by desires so as not to be able to take 
 interest in it all. I love you and long to help 
 you, and indeed I entreat you (however trite the 
 words may be) to think that life is not empty, 
 nor made for nothing; and that the parts of it 
 fit one into another in some way; and that the 
 world goes on, beautiful and strange and dread- 
 ful and worshipful." 
 
 And again, writing, about the same time, of 
 the religion of the ancient Northmen, a religion 
 which in its essentials and apart from the par- 
 ticular mythology in which they enwrapped it, 
 he had pretty much adopted as his own : 
 
 b 9
 
 " It may be," he says, " that the world shall 
 worsen, that men shall grow afraid to change 
 their life, that the world shall be weary itself, 
 and sicken, and none but faint-hearts be left — 
 who knows? So comes the end at last, and the 
 evil, bound for awhile, is loose, and all nameless 
 merciless horrors. So comes the great strife ; & 
 like the kings and heroes that they have loved, 
 the gods also must die, the gods who made that 
 strifeful imperfedl earth. At last the great de- 
 struction breaks out over all things, and the old 
 earth and heavens are gone, and then, a new 
 heaven and earth. What goes on there? Who 
 shall say, of us who know only of rest and peace 
 by toil and strife ? And what shall be our share 
 in it? Well, sometimes we must needs think 
 that we shall live again ; yet, if that were not, 
 would it not be enough that we helped to make 
 this glory, and lived not altogether deedless?" 
 
 I had it in my mind to quote one more pass- 
 age, of verse this time, very likely written, as 
 these other passages certainly were, in St. Ed- 
 ward Street hard by. Portions of it will be very 
 much to the point later. And when I come to 
 quote them, I would ask you to remember that 
 it is in his poetry, not in his familiar talk and 
 writing, that a poet reveals himself most com- 
 pletely. With his acquaintances, even with his 
 
 lO
 
 friends and colleagues, he has reserves and 
 shynesses : to the whole world and to it alone 
 he can speak his mind fully out. And thus in 
 the lines from one of the most notable passages 
 of Sigurd the Volsung — the famous Wisdom 
 of Brynhild near the conclusion of the second 
 book — which I shall have occasion to quote, 
 will be found, even more than in those other 
 striking and noble words which I have just 
 read, the deepest thoughts of their author, and 
 the full measure of the strength and the guid- 
 ance which he had to bestow. 
 
 The passages I have quoted, and the passages 
 which I shall have occasion to quote, were writ- 
 ten in 1876. Morris was then forty-two, in the 
 full prime and vigour of life. He had an im- 
 mense & varied experience behind him, as stu- 
 dent, artist, workman, and employer: but it had 
 all been remote from public affairs & social pro- 
 blems. He had twenty years yet to live. They 
 were divided into three almost equal periods. 
 During the first of them, he served in the ranks 
 of English Liberalism. During the second, he 
 was a leader of English Socialism. In the last, 
 he gradually withdrew from public life & ad;ive 
 political work, but remained a great and steady 
 influence on the Socialist side. And that, since 
 his death, he has still remained by the effed; of 
 
 II
 
 his writing's and his example. But through all 
 those years he was consistent in the one great 
 obje(!;l at which he aimed, which was the Rli- 
 STORATION OF HAPPINESS TO HU- 
 MAN LIFE BYITS RECONSTRUCTION 
 ON THE BASIS OF FREEDOM AND 
 JUSTICE. For without freedom and justice, 
 he held, there could be neither beauty nor en- 
 joyment, neither art nor comfort, nor any single 
 one of thethings which givehumanlifeits value. 
 And this reconstruction of life he sought, so 
 soon as he became fully aware of the actual in- 
 justice and slavery in which society as it exists 
 is rooted and founded, first as a Liberal, seeking 
 to reach justice through freedom, negatively, by 
 extension of self-government and abolition of 
 privilege ; and then as a Socialist, seeking to 
 reach freedom through justice, positively, by a 
 profound change in the strudlure of society and 
 the condudl of life. 
 
 It would seem strange, to anyone who came, 
 according to the fancy of romance-writers, into 
 this world from another planet, or to one who 
 had grown up here keeping, in mature years and 
 full intelligence, the terrible simplicity of child- 
 hood, that there should be any antagonism, or 
 even any great divergence, between Liberalism 
 and Socialism whether in principles or in prac- 
 
 12
 
 tice. To such a one it might well seem that the 
 two dodlrines both responded to the voice of 
 reason and of the human conscience, and that 
 though their language was different, the sense 
 of what they said was nearly akin. An anti- 
 social Liberalism might seem, like an illiberal 
 Socialism, something of a contradiction. And 
 there is a point, in both thought and practice, 
 at which both are within reach of one another, 
 and both are held in solution in the same mind. 
 Yet their divergence is from the first visible ; 
 and so far, all experience goes to prove that this 
 divergence is cumulative, and, as regards any 
 one person, final. A man may exchange one 
 creed for the other : he may fluctuate back and 
 forward between them : he may — and this is a 
 common case — fail to hold either while he pro- 
 fesses or believes himself to hold one, or the 
 other, or both. But for those who have the 
 hardihood to follow out their belief, not shrink- 
 ing from consequences or cutting away their 
 dodtrine to the measure of their convenience, 
 the parting of the ways comes sooner or later, 
 and the choice has to be made. It is not a light 
 choice for those who realise something of what 
 it involves. It may not be amiss for a gathering 
 of people who are all, I suppose, in the broad 
 and general sense of the word, Socialists, or at 
 
 13
 
 least in sympathy with Socialism, to consider a 
 little more closely than we are apt to do, what 
 the price of Socialism is. And I approach this 
 question the more willingly now, because its 
 answer depends on the principle which is the 
 first article in the constitution of this Church, 
 that Socialism is no mere body of economic 
 doctrine, but is in the full sense of the word a 
 religion. 
 
 To hold Socialism as an economic dodlrine, 
 the price that has to be paid is in no way serious. 
 Between two bodies of economic doclrine, there 
 may of course be antagonism both profound 
 and far-reaching. But economic dodtrine is, on 
 either side and in any circumstances, only con- 
 tingent truth. The whole vital force of any 
 economic system depends from first to last on 
 the moral principles upon which it is based, and 
 the social ends towards which it is dired;ed. It 
 only becomes a rule for human life, so far as 
 it is brought into connection with some larger 
 theory of what human life is and means ; with 
 what men believe, silently it may be and half- 
 unconsciously, to be the final cause & the chief 
 end of life, or in the words of a more formal 
 theology, the will of God. 
 
 Now if one is asked whether Liberalism is 
 not also a religion, and if so, whether it is, either
 
 in its essential nature or as a matter of fad: and 
 as things stand, incompatible with the religion 
 ofSocialism,theanswerwould seem to be some- 
 what as follows. Liberalism has been a religion 
 in the past, more than once; and what has hap- 
 pened may happen again. But at the present 
 day it certainly does not bear that charader ex- 
 cept among a very small remnant : and when 
 I say it is not a religion, I mean it is not a faith, 
 an aspiration, a controlling passion which ac- 
 tually rules men's lives. During one genera- 
 tion some fifty or sixty years ago, it was in this 
 country one of the religions that really count- 
 ed, that w^ere powers and lights in the world. 
 George Grote, Richard Cobden, John Stuart 
 Mill, Robert and Elizabeth Browning, Charles 
 Dickens — all Liberals — these are among the 
 great English names that rise to one's mind 
 when one thinks of that period : perhaps even 
 a more inspiring name than any of these is that 
 of the great Italian who became in his long exile 
 here half an Englishman, Giuseppe Mazzini. 
 The last fifty years have made Liberalism what 
 it is now, inert towards reform, feeble against 
 readion, a mere political party held together by 
 old habit and ready to sell mostof its principles 
 at a low figure : like a shop where you may see 
 written across the front as you pass, "Premises 
 
 15
 
 coming down : the entire stock to be disposed 
 of at an immense reduction." The fact is plain 
 that at the present day it fails to meet one of 
 the simplest tests that can be applied to any- 
 thingclaiming to be a religion, thequestion put 
 to its professors, What do you give up for it and 
 what do you keep back ? For the real meaning 
 of religion is that to which a man subordinates 
 and sacrifices everything else. Whatever out- 
 ward religion he may profess or prad:ise, his real 
 religion, if he has one, is that according to which 
 he ad:ually lives. His life may be guided and 
 controlled by many things — by love, by fear, by 
 pride, by selfishness, by habit ; w^hichever it is 
 that rules him, that is his religion. Morris put 
 his Liberalism to this test : he tried to make it 
 real, & found that the attempt led him straight 
 into Socialism. What he concluded, during the 
 years in which he tried to be or thought he was 
 a Liberal, w^as that whether Liberalism were a 
 religion or not, it at all events was not and could 
 not be his religion ; that he did not live accord- 
 ing to it and did not desire to do so. W^hen he 
 became a Socialist, he paid the price ; and that 
 price included his old Liberalism. 
 
 To become Socialists in this sense, all men 
 must make a similar payment, namely, the sur- 
 render of everything incompatible with Social- 
 i6
 
 ism. But is the surrender of Liberalism part of 
 that price of necessity? The question is a grave 
 one. To some, it may be little or no sacrifice. 
 To others it is a sacrifice so great that they de- 
 liberately and conscientiously refuse to make it. 
 For with the creed that has to be given up are 
 involved some of the greatest and most superb 
 ideals which have ever been placed before itself 
 by the human race. 
 
 Human nature, in its course from one age to 
 another, perhaps changes but little ; and if we 
 go back in history two thousand five hundred 
 years, we find the two great ideals between which 
 a choice has somehow or other to be made un- 
 less they can be reconciled in any higher form 
 of thought and belief, each working out its own 
 course; not, as now, interwoven and intermin- 
 gled within a single complex and vast society, 
 but separately in different races & among social 
 surroundings of comparative simplicity. In an- 
 cient Greece, the religion chosen, that by which 
 and for which men lived, to which they postponed 
 everything else, for the sake of which they cheer- 
 fully made every sacrifice, was summed up in a 
 single word, liberty. For this liberty they were 
 ready to sacrifice ease, to forgo wealth, to vio- 
 late justice. Thesplendourof what theyachieved 
 in the powerof that name has made them almost 
 c 17
 
 more than human for all future j^^enerations. 
 They invented and perfected theself-^^overnin^ 
 state. They carried the artsand thedaily beauty 
 of life to a pitch rarely, if ever, since equalled. 
 They founded science: they consummated phi- 
 losophy: they were great alike in peace and war. 
 Among them were born patriotism, self-know- 
 ledge, obedience to law. The life that they aimed 
 at and in great measure realised for the citizen 
 was richer and fuller and more intense than has 
 lain within the compass or the vision of any 
 succeeding age or country. All this they did by 
 virtue of Liberalism held and aded on as a 
 religion. 
 
 Meanwhile, another Mediterranean commun- 
 ity was passing through a very different experi- 
 ence. The two small kingdoms of Judah and 
 Israel had reached what was at that time a high 
 state of progress in civilisation. Wealth in- 
 creased and commerce flourished; there was 
 almost complete religious toleration, and public 
 burdens were not heavy. The people, in the vivid 
 phrase of a contemporary writer, were at ease 
 in Zion. But among them rose up, in the hearts 
 and brains of a series of extraordinary men, the 
 spirit of revolutionary Socialism. 'Tt is an evil 
 time," said the prophets as they regarded the 
 wealth and prosperity round them, the peace at 
 i8
 
 home and the successful wars abroad. "Your 
 treading is upon the poor and you take from him 
 burdens of wheat : you swallow up the needy 
 and buy the poor for silver. What do you mean, 
 you who beat the Lord's people to pieces and 
 grind the faces of the poor ? Woe to you that 
 desire the day of the Lord ! to what end is it 
 for you ? the day of the Lord is darkness and 
 not light." 
 
 Before that fierce cry for justice all the other 
 objedts of life seemed without value. The will 
 of God, as the prophets understood it, was not 
 accomplished by increase of wealth, extension 
 of territory, growth of civic institutions. Upon 
 the ideas of progress, of empire, of patriotism 
 they passed the same crushing condemnation : 
 " Woe to him who builds a town with blood, 
 and establishes a state by iniquity : it is not of 
 the Lord that the people should labour in the 
 very fire, and weary themselves for very vanity." 
 
 Against the revolutionary Socialism of the 
 prophets the patriotic party could not make 
 head. Sapped atthe foundationsof theirstrength 
 by this terrible attack, the two kingdoms per- 
 ished. The fall of the rich and the destrudion 
 of the state which they had founded did not 
 issue in any reign of the humble. The cry of 
 the poor still went up, bitter as before. From 
 
 19
 
 a worldly point of view, that Socialist move- 
 ment was a complete failure. But it bec|ueathed 
 to the world an ideal which has never been for- 
 gotten, and outside of which the human spirit 
 has never found peace or satisfad;ion. 
 
 In those ancient times we have the two ideals, 
 the Greek ideal of freedom and progress, which 
 is the religion of Liberalism, the Hebrew ideal 
 of righteousness and peace, which is the religion 
 of Socialism, in sharp antagonism. Is it still 
 so now? Must each of us still, as we stand at 
 this parting of the ways, choose which of the 
 two he will follow? Must success in a com- 
 munity as in an individual be always rooted 
 on injustice? and must the justice and peace 
 which are the goal of Socialism be attained, if 
 they are attained at all, at a price which includes 
 the renunciation of some of the most stimulat- 
 ing ideals of mankind ? 
 
 If such be indeed the choice, the choice must 
 still be made : and the answer given by the 
 greatest teachers is unhesitating: choose right- 
 eousness. Such was the dodlrine of the Hebrew 
 prophets, from Isaiah the courtier to Amos the 
 herdsman ; such the dodlrine of Plato, that great 
 and lonely figure of the Greek world ; such the 
 dod;rine of him whose teaching, as the express 
 and immediate Word of God, the Christian 
 20
 
 nations profess to follow. Yet all these teachers 
 have laid equal stress on the belief, from which 
 no failure and no disappointment could make 
 them swerve, that the great renunciation brings 
 its own reward . The Old Testament prophecies 
 are full from end to end of enthusiastic belief 
 in a reign of justice upon earth, a golden age 
 at the door, not in any remote future, or any 
 other world. Plato's greatest work is devoted 
 to establishing the dodlrine that the Socialist 
 community is in fadl the only one in which 
 there is true well-being for the individual. Of 
 progress and freedom apart from righteousness 
 — and the aim of the Republic is to show by 
 stringent proof that righteousness in the com- 
 munity is Socialism — he would have fully ac- 
 cepted the description of Habakkuk, that they 
 are very vanity and labour in the fire. Jesus 
 Christ likewise lays down the same dodlrine in 
 well-known words: "Seek first the Kingdom 
 of God and his righteousness, and all these 
 things shall be added to you ; there is no man 
 that has left house or parents or brethren or 
 wife or children for the Kingdom of God's sake, 
 who shall not receive manifold more in this 
 present time." 
 
 Such is the docftrine of the great teachers of 
 the past, such the fixed belief to-day of con- 
 
 21
 
 vinced Socialists. They hold that the ideals 
 of Liberalism, freedom, enlightenment, and 
 progress, are attainable under Socialism ; nay, 
 that it is only under Socialism that they can in 
 any real sense be attained. 
 
 But in this they assert more than they can 
 prove. The will of God, as regards the future 
 of humanity, is not clear. Of the vast curve 
 upon which the world moves we do not possess 
 the formula and cannot predict the ultimate 
 dired:ion. The Power, not ourselves, that is 
 in things, is not demonstrably a Power that 
 makes for righteousness. 
 
 So strongly have men in all ages felt this, 
 that they have perpetually been driven into 
 referring the solution of the enigma and the 
 triumph of justice to some conjed;ural future 
 life. Even Plato does so. It is the unique dis- 
 tindlion of the Jewish prophets that they were 
 never tempted for a single moment into accept- 
 ing any such easy and dangerous solution. The 
 reign of justice in this world was the one thing 
 they proclaimed. It is with them that the So- 
 cialism of this twentieth century, so far as it 
 is a religion, has perhaps most affinity. But 
 there is a further likeness; for we find both 
 mixed with a great deal of rash statement, of 
 demonstrable error, and of predictions falsified 
 
 22
 
 by the events. The Socialist movement of the 
 last generation tried to prove its truth by- 
 miracles. It disastrously failed to do so. Like 
 other religions it must discard its superstitions 
 before it can become universal. 
 
 It is a common reproach against Socialism 
 that it is revolutionary, that it aims at over- 
 turning the order of the world. Nor is this said 
 of it in reproach only. This revolutionary char- 
 ad;er is claimed for it by many of its adherents 
 as some unique quality that distinguishes it 
 from other beliefs. The boast and the reproach 
 are alike superficial. All religious movements 
 are revolutionary. The greatest & most drastic 
 revolutionofwhichwe have full historical know- 
 ledge is that which has been accomplished in 
 the last hundred years, by the complete subver- 
 sion of an established mediaeval order and the 
 reconstrudtion of society on a capitalistic basis. 
 That revolution is accepted now as a matter of 
 course: but no one, when it began, would have 
 been believed had he predicated the course it 
 would take or the effedt on the world it would 
 produce. It also in its time had the reactionary 
 forces arrayed against it ; and though of the 
 good and evil that it has wrought, the evil may 
 seem to outweigh the good, it won its first 
 triumphs as a religion ; by appealing not only 
 
 23
 
 to men's selfishness, but to their emotions and 
 aspirations. Thus it was that it took the world 
 by storm, and within two or three generations 
 had transformed the whole face of civilisation. 
 Then it slackened and faltered. A few bold 
 men pointed out, amid a storm of obloquy, that 
 what it was really doin^^^was to kill art, to in- 
 tensify slavery, to degrade and brutalise life ; 
 and that why this had come about was, that 
 with all its splendid aims, it was founded on 
 injustice. The attack on capitalist Liberalism 
 made by Ruskin in i860 shocked its readers 
 without convincing them. Even later than 
 that, it took Morris, as we have seen, seven 
 years and untold perplexities to change his 
 allegiance. So great is the authority of any 
 dodtrine which once has actually ruled the life 
 of mankind. 
 
 Both in Germany, where the Socialists are 
 numerous and well organised, and in England 
 where they are few in numbers and torn by 
 internal dissension, the chief danger of the 
 present time to the cause of progress perhaps 
 lies in those professing Socialists with whom 
 all the ennobling and inspiring influence of 
 their creed sinks away in a coarse and timid 
 materialism. To give a more prad:ical turn to 
 the Socialist programme is the avowed objecl: 
 24
 
 of a large body of thought in both countries. 
 But what is plausibly called prad:ical So- 
 cialism is often little more than the old order 
 based on the old injustice, but with a new set 
 of formulas; or it might be called capitalism 
 cleared from a few of its flagrant absurdities, 
 and not impossibly with a few fresh absurdi- 
 ties added. We can see how far it has led some 
 men in compromisingwith their principles and 
 abandoning their ideals. Practical Socialism 
 as held by them is rapidly becoming indistin- 
 guishable from the government of an armed 
 bureaucracy. It has in substance if not in words 
 renounced the brotherhood of mankind. It is 
 prepared to restore hostile competition, in a 
 more complex and dangerous form, as a main 
 motive in life ; to condone war and welcome 
 conquest ; to nationalise injustice ; to take as 
 its watchword not righteousness but efficiency. 
 Between such a Socialism and the materialised 
 capitalistic Liberalism against which true So- 
 cialism is a revolt and a protest, there need not 
 be any insurmountable antagonism ; it is not 
 beyond possibility that the two might enter 
 into an unholy alliance. A counter-alliance 
 between what is vital in Socialism and what 
 yet lives in Liberalism may be only a dream ; 
 yet it is a dream in which one would willingly 
 d 25
 
 indulge. But it would be essential to such an 
 alliance that it should be on either side given, 
 and not bought or sold ; still less, that in order 
 to make it, either party should step down on 
 to a lower level and forfeit for no return the 
 flower of its inheritance. A materialised So- 
 cialism might be even a worse thing than a 
 materialised Liberalism in proportion as the 
 ideal from which it had fallen was higher. What 
 is quite certain is, that the ideals of Liberalism 
 or of any other creed would be ill exchanged 
 for a Socialism that had renounced its ideals, 
 or " like the fiend paltered with them in a 
 double sense." If the two must fight it out, let 
 them at least fight it out on the highest plane. 
 Hear the wisdom of Brynhild : 
 
 Strive not with the fools of man-folk : for be- 
 like thou shall overco7ne, 
 
 And what then is the gain of thy hunting 
 when thou bearest the quarry home ? 
 
 Or else shall the fool overcome thee, and what 
 deed thereof shall grow f 
 
 Nay, strive with the wise man rather, and 
 increase thy woe and his woe, 
 
 Yet thereof a gain hast thou gotten, and the 
 half of thine heart hast thou won 
 
 If thou mayest prevail against him, and his 
 deeds are thv deeds thou hast done ; 
 26
 
 Yea, and if thou fall before him, in him shall 
 
 than live again, 
 And thy deeds in his hand shall blossom, and 
 
 his heart of thy heart shall be fain. 
 
 No one held more firmly than Morris, that 
 the material wretchedness into which capitalism 
 had plunged a great portion of the human race 
 must be somehow or other got rid of before real 
 construd;ive work can be done towards the 
 building up of a socialised community — or (for 
 the two phrases to him meant the same) of a 
 communised society. But no one held more 
 clearly that mere material well-being was not 
 Socialism. The law of capitalism, that under 
 it the rich must always become richer and the 
 poor poorer, is a mere abstrad: lawof economics. 
 It is checked and deflecfted in a thousand ways 
 by other forces, legislative, social, and personal. 
 Capitalism in the hands of humane and far- 
 seeing men (if it could remain for long in such 
 hands, which may be doubted) might produce 
 improvements in the material strucfture of life 
 to which it is difficult to fix a limit. The modern 
 organisers of the great Trusts boldly claim just 
 such a diffused material well-being as the out- 
 come of their policy if it is allowed to carry 
 itself out to its conclusion. The suspicion and 
 dislike which they have roused in a capitalist 
 
 27
 
 society might almost seem to bear out this 
 claim. There is an uneasy feeling, that they 
 may find it economically advantageous to al- 
 leviate the lot of the worker ; and that, if the 
 lot of the worker be sensibly alleviated, he may 
 have leisure and inclination to raise many 
 awkward questions; he may even be unwilling 
 any longer to be treated, as he now is, with 
 unexampled humanity. And a certain number 
 of theoretic Socialists acflually agree in thiswith 
 the magnates of competitive commercialism : 
 they claim to see, in the modern developments 
 of the capitalistic system, such a gradual so- 
 cialisation of labour and capital as will one day, 
 quite simply and quietly, enable realised So- 
 cialism to be brought about, as it were by the 
 touching of a button. A system rooted and 
 grounded on injustice will flower into justice; 
 grapes will be gathered of thorns and figs of 
 thistles ; and if we only go on doing wrong 
 long enough, systematically enough, and above 
 all, efficiently enough, it will somehow or other 
 (such are the marvellous ways of Providence) 
 turn into doing right of itself. 
 
 Listen to Morris' answer, long before he be- 
 came a Socialist, to this amazing dodtrine : 
 
 JVhen thou hear est the fool rejoicing, and he 
 saith, It is over ajid past, 
 28
 
 And the wrong was better than right, and hate 
 
 turns into love at the last, 
 And we strove for nothing at all, and the Gods 
 
 are fallen asleep; 
 For so good is the world a-growing that the 
 
 evil good shall reap : — 
 Then loosest thy sword in the scabbard and 
 
 settle the helm on thy head, 
 For men betrayed are mighty, and great are 
 
 the wrongftdly dead. 
 
 The words are strong, but not too strong for the 
 occasion. Even more stern is the condemnation 
 of the ancient prophet : "Woe unto them that 
 draw iniquity with cords of hypocrisy, that say 
 ' Let the counsel of the Holy One draw nigh and 
 come! ' that justify the wicked, and take away 
 the righteousness of the righteous from him." 
 Even more terse is the Christian teaching, as to 
 those who do evil that good may come. It is in 
 four words : " whose damnation is just." 
 
 But the relapse into materialism is a danger 
 to which the Socialist ideal is always subjed: : 
 so easy it is, so easy has it always been, to let 
 the aspiration for justice dwindle into a mere 
 craving for comfort. Here is the real parting 
 of the ways : a parting that does not come to a 
 man or to a community once only in their life, 
 but continuously at every moment ; the choice 
 
 29
 
 between the one thini( that is highest and the 
 other things that would take its place or stand 
 in its way : between that which is perhaps un- 
 attainable but which alone can satisfy, and that 
 which maybe attained but to be satisfied with 
 which is death. Listen to the words of a great 
 French thinker of the last generation. 
 
 "All humanitarian dreams are contradictory ; 
 for the imagination runs in a narrow circle, and 
 the figures it traces perpetually cross each other. 
 The Revolution had for its motto freedom and 
 brotherhood : it bore the Empire. The great 
 German idealism of the Goethes and the 
 Herders led up to an iron realism, that ignores 
 everything but main force. What shall be said 
 of modern Socialism, and of the changes of front 
 it would make if ever it arrived at power ? In 
 the sphere of science there is certainly progress: 
 in the sphere of human morality, that is more 
 doubtful. Yet the future rests with those who 
 are not disillusioned. Woe to those of whom 
 Saint Paul speaks, qui spent non habent, who 
 have lost hope." 
 
 Is this striking and eloquent passage meant 
 as a sancftion or a condemnation of the Socialist 
 movement ? It w^ould be difficult to say. With 
 his French lucidity, Renan saw and stated the 
 problem that faces us at the parting of the ways ; 
 
 30
 
 he offers no solution. But there is a deep lesson 
 in his last words. The impatience of the earlier 
 Socialists was as marked a quality in them as 
 theirhopefulness. Ifwehave been partly cured of 
 impatience bythe hard lessons of thepast, do not 
 let us fall into the other and the more dangerous 
 extreme, that hopelessness which is so often the 
 reacftion from impatience, and its punishment. 
 They cried out aloud because God's justice was 
 slow. We are more apt to keep silence because 
 it does not seem sure. Let the poet and prophet 
 answer for us once more : 
 
 Be wise, and cherish thine hope in the freshness 
 
 of the days 
 And scatter its seed from thine hand in the 
 
 field of the people s praise. 
 Then fair shall it fall in the furrow, and some 
 
 the earth shall speed, 
 And the sons of men shallmarvel at the blossom 
 
 of the deed. 
 But some the earth shall speed not: nay, rather 
 
 the wind of the heaven 
 Shall waft it away from thy longing — and a 
 
 gift to the Gods hast thou given. 
 Love thou the Gods — and withsta^td them, lest 
 
 thy fame should fail in the end 
 And thou be but their thrall and their bonds- 
 
 man^ who wert born for theirvery friend. 
 
 31
 
 For few things from the Gods are hidden, and 
 the hearts of men they know, 
 
 And how that none rejoiceth to qnail and 
 crouch alow. 
 
 In all the later teaching of William Morris 
 you will find thi^ clear courageous note, this 
 rallying-cry against impatience and despond- 
 ency. For that too he had paid the full price. It 
 has been long observed, said Dr. Johnson, that 
 men do not susped: faults which they do not 
 commit. Morris was by native temperament 
 both impatient and despondent. His impati- 
 ence was the source of perpetual amusement 
 among his friends; his despondency tinges the 
 brightness and flaws the beauty of his earlier 
 poetry. By hard work, by pure life, by deep 
 thought, he schooled himself out of both these 
 faults, and became in his later years quite re- 
 markable for his inexhaustible patience and his 
 constant hopefulness. Time brought him, in 
 one hand, failure; he saw the Socialist move- 
 ment of the nineteenth century (the words are 
 his own) run into sand ; in the other, it brought 
 him aclear and unshaken belief in theSocialism 
 of the future. It brought him, too, a reward the 
 most precious of all that can be won by man, 
 that impassioned contemplation of the universe 
 in which the masters of thought agree to place 
 32
 
 the utmost felicity of human life. " It seems to 
 me," he wrote ten years before his death, "that 
 no hour of the day passes that the whole world 
 does not show itself to me." To Plato likewise, 
 the final reward of the just was not any mate- 
 rial ease or comfort, no, not even any common 
 wealth and civic well-being, but to be the spec- 
 tator of all time and of all existence. With such 
 a vision Sigurd in the poem saw the world from 
 the mountain summit after he had learned the 
 wisdom of Brynhild. 
 
 For far away beneath the7n lie the kingdoms 
 
 of the earth, 
 And the garths of men-folk's dwellings and 
 
 the streams that water them^ 
 And the rich and plenteous acres and the 
 
 silver oceans hem ; 
 And the woodland wastes and the mountains^ 
 
 and all that holdeth all : 
 The house and the ship and the island, the 
 
 loom and the mine and the stall. 
 The beds of bane and healing, the crafts that 
 
 slay and save, 
 The temple of God and the Doom-ring, the 
 
 cradle and the grave. 
 
 In a sense, there was never any parting of the 
 ways for Morris, because throughout life his 
 e 33
 
 way was, to a dcf^^rcc almost unexampled in our 
 time, single and straight forward. As soon as 
 he was convinced that a thing was right, how- 
 ever strange or difficult or imprudent it were, 
 his choice was already made, and he simply did 
 it. In this at least, if not in his other more un- 
 approachable qualities, he has left an example 
 that we may humbly attempt to follow. That 
 immense and all-embracing outlook is only for 
 the great minds of the world, and is by them 
 only attained through long labour and vigilant 
 discipline. But to all of us, if our heart is fixed 
 on doing right within our daily sphere and the 
 limits of our narrower horizon, Socialism must 
 needs be as Morris called it, a belief involving 
 the very noblest ideals of human life and duty. 
 For this Church and for all believers, the motive 
 forces of life are manifold. One orotherof them 
 will take a place before the rest in different 
 minds; the love of beauty, the pursuit of truth, 
 the glory of freedom, the law of kindness, the 
 joy of brotherhood: BUT ABOVE THEM 
 ALL, BEFORE THEM ALL, BEYOND 
 THEM ALL, IS THE HUNGER AND 
 THIRST AFTER RIGHTEOUSNESS. 
 
 34
 
 Printed at the Chiswick Press : Charles Whit- 
 tingham & Co., Tooks Court, Chancery Lane, 
 London. And sold by the Hammersmith Pub- 
 lishing Society, River House, Hammersmith.
 
 ESSAYS and ADDRESSES towards the 
 formation of CONSTRUCTIVE IDEALS 
 in POLITICS, COMMERCE and EDUCA- 
 TION, published and sold by The Hammer- 
 smith Publishing Society, River House, Ham- 
 mersmith. Price 2s. 6d. net each. 
 
 ECCE MUNDUS. By T. J. COBDEN- 
 SANDERSON. 
 
 WILLIAM MORRIS. AN ADDRESS. 
 By J. W. MACKAIL. 
 
 SOCIALISM AND POLITICS. AN AD- 
 DRESS AND A PROGRAMME. 
 By J. W. MACKAIL. 
 
 THE PARTING OF THE WAYS. AN 
 ADDRESS. By J. W. MACKAIL. 
 
 Others are in contemplation.
 
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