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THE chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is, undoubtedly, the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity ofliving for others which, in the present condition of things, presses so hardly uponalmost everybody. In fact, scarcely anyone at all escapes.Now and then, in the course of the century, a great man of science, like Darwin; agreat poet, like Keats; a fine critical spirit, like M. Renan; a supreme artist, likeFlaubert, has been able to isolate himself, to keep himself out of reach of theclamorous claims of others, to stand 'under the shelter of the wall, ' as Plato puts it, and so to realise the perfection of what was in him, to his own incomparable gain, andto the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These, however, areexceptions. The majority of people spoil their lives by an unhealthy and exaggeratedaltruism-are forced, indeed, so to spoil them. They find themselves surrounded byhideous poverty, by hideous ugliness, by hideous starvation. It is inevitable that theyshould be strongly moved by all this. The emotions of man are stirred more quicklythan man's intelligence; and, as I pointed out some time ago in an article on thefunction of criticism, it is much more easy to have sympathy with suffering than it isto have sympathy with thought. Accordingly, with admirable, though misdirectedintentions, they very seriously and very sentimentally set themselves to the task ofremedying the evils that they see. But their remedies do not cure the disease: theymerely prolong it. Indeed, their remedies are part of the disease.They try to solve the problem of poverty, for instance, by keeping the poor alive; or, in the case of a very advanced school, by amusing the poor.But this is not a solution: it is an aggravation of the difficulty. The proper aim is to tryand reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible. And thealtruistic virtues have really prevented the carrying out of this aim. Just as the worstslave-owners were those who were kind to their slaves, and so prevented the horrorof the system being realised by those who suffered from it, and understood by thosewho contemplated it, so, in the present state of things in England, the people who domost harm are the people who try to do most good; and at last we have had thespectacle of men who have really studied the problem and know the life-educatedmen who live in the East End-coming forward and imploring the community torestrain its altruistic impulses of charity, benevolence, and the like. They do so on theground that such charity degrades and demoralises. They are perfectly right. Charitycreates a multitude of s

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