material is substance of this expensive sort, it is a little easier to solve the question which Mr James himself raised in his lecture on Balzac, and which his own case puts just as insistently, namely, how a man can find time, not merely to write so much of such a quality, but, while writing so much, to see and study life. Mr James answers the question by saying that Balzac quarried his material within himself. But if the artist obtains this knowledge within himself, what guarantee has the reader that he is getting the real thing, life itself. Obviously none, save the tests that his own experience can bring to bear on the finished representation. But it is just the mark of the great artists that they triumphantly meet this test and do what is called inspire conviction. That failure to self-saturate is a mark of intellectual disloyalty, is just as much the lesson of Mr James as it is of Balzac or Shakespeare. And the fact of self-saturation is the key to the mystery of a man's finding time to absorb so much life and give it back in so many books. For the brain that 'intends upon itself' instead of shifting about like a reporter with a note-book-granting it the initial gift of imaginative divination-that brain has only to sit quietly and to record what it sees and knows. And it is precisely the brain of that special stamp which, seeing and knowing a million things intuitively, where the less endowed know only piecemeal and empirically, can dispense with the cruder, slower methods of acquisition, since it is the brain of genius.

How much genius can 'give' is a question in physicochemistry, analogous with that of the 'work' to be got out of an engine or a dynamo. An infinitude of automatic reactions, syntheses, elaborations, may take place in the subconsciousness; but evidently nothing takes place, or next to nothing, if the machine is a poor one. The first distinction of superior minds is that they not only see more alertly, instantly, untiringly, than the average intelligence, but that they see a great deal more, the word 'see' possessing here no figurative meaning, nor any sense more mystical than that implied by the mere physical fact of vision. The second distinction is that they never see anything without feeling it. This faculty of storing up in the brain a latent emotive energy, a complex precipitate of perception in being, is what Mr James

2 E 2

has called 'the mystery and the marvel of experience,' an accretion that 'may amount to an enormous sum, even when the figures on the slate are too few and too paltry to mention. It may count for enrichment without one's knowing why.' With the average nerve-stuff of the crowd it ordinarily counts for very little. The average human reactions are of a melodramatic positiveness and an unironic sentimentality; and all these feelings hang grotesquely asunder, or, at best, are reciprocally attached by a very meagre set of associative guide-ropes. In a mind like that of Mr James, on the contrary, every element of the spectacle of life is an occasion for representation, and every representation a complex incentive to immediate artistic creation. The spectacle of Mr James's intelligence at work, transmuting his experience into literature, might be compared with the mysterious processes of radioactivity. Nature, the world, life, impinge on, punctuate, his consciousness with a myriad of tiny unmeaning holes, and that consciousness has the magic capacity of transmuting these perforations, these nothings, into intelligible signs. The whole interior shiver determined by the ceaselessly beating waves of sensations, all the trembling consequences of each thud of the wave, its impact on the stored-up and beautifully classified images of his older sensations, all are automatically noted, translated and read out by this 'restless analyst' as by a Pollak receptor. A consciousness so completely alive is the rarest state of human activity. Operations of this nature have, of course, all their interest in proportion as the dim richness of the internal glow penetrates a larger and larger deposit of sensations.

When the mind in question glows with a larger number of stored-up images of anterior perceptions than are wont to be deposited in any save the most sensitive brain-stuff, every fresh onset of outside sensation produces a wondrously chromatic emotional at mosphere; and when that mind is the mind of a novelist, and of such a novelist as Henry James, his own account of his feeling, his report on the aspect of the shifting phenomena within, results necessarily in the ordered beauty of those complex renderings of life, his novels of the last ten years.

MORTON FULLERTON.

Art. 5.-SOCIALISM.

I. ITS MEANING AND ORIGIN.

1. The Quintessence of Socialism.

By Dr A. Schäffle. Translated from the eighth German edition by Bernard Bosanquet, LL.D. London: Sonnenschein, 1889. 2. A History of Socialism. By Thomas Kirkup. Third edition. London: Black, 1906.

3. Das Philosophisch-ökonomische System des Marxismus. Von Dr Emil Hammacher. Leipzig: Duncker und Humblot, 1909.

4. L'Individualisme économique et social. Par Albert Schatz. Paris: Armand Colin, 1907.

5. Le Socialisme. Par Mermeix. Paris: Ollendorf, 1906. 6. Histoire du Socialisme Français.

Paris Revue Blanche,' 1901.

Par Paul Louis.

7. Capital. By Karl Marx. London: Sonnenschein, 1908. 8. Socialism in Church History. By Conrad Noel. London: Palmer, 1910.

9. Socialism and Modern Thought. By M. Kaufmann. London: Methuen, 1895.

10. The Right to the Whole Produce of Labour. By Dr Anton Menger; with introduction by Prof. H. S. Foxwell. London: Macmillan, 1899.

11. Collectivism. By P. Leroy Beaulieu. Translated by Sir Arthur Clay. London: Murray, 1908.

12. A Critical Examination of Socialism. Mallock. London: Murray, 1908.

By W. H.

13. Socialism in Theory and Practice. By Morris Hillquit. New York: The Macmillan Co., 1909.

Of all the 'isms' invented by man for his edification or his torment, none has excited so much controversy and produced so much confusion of thought, none is so variable and elastic in meaning, none so slippery and elusive, as Socialism. It presents so many aspects, embraces so many conceptions and touches so many interests that it is, if not all things to all men, something to every man, and something different from It is both abstract and concrete, each point of view. theoretical and practical; it is a philosophy, a religion, an ethical scheme, an interpretation of history, an imagi

native vision, an economic theory, a juristic concept, a popular movement, a philanthropic ideal, a political programme, a revolution, an evolution, a class war, the end of strife, a greedy scramble, a gospel of love, a gospel of hate, the bright hope of mankind, a dark menace to society, the dawn of the millennium, and a frightful catastrophe-as you choose to regard it.

And as if these different views were not bewildering enough, the subject is further complicated by the practice, of which advocates and opponents are both guilty, of identifying Socialism with anything to which it bears any resemblance, and applying the name to all actions and ideas which have, or ever have had, anything in common with it. For instance, it aims at brotherly love and the elevation of mankind; therefore it is one with Christianity which has the same aims. Or, it involves State action for the benefit of the poor; therefore, any State action for their benefit is socialistic. Thus it is indistinguishable from 'social reform'; and we are said to be 'all Socialists now.' Again, it stands for justice, for equality, for sympathy; and straightway a host of moralists, from Plato onwards, who have discoursed of these ideals for hundreds of years before the thing was invented, are discovered to be Socialists. It would interfere with the free play of commercial activity and favour one section at the expense of another; protective tariffs do so too, and are therefore in the same boat. Or, to take the other side, it would revolutionise the social order, and is therefore held to be in line with all other revolutionary and lawless forces. It denies the rights of property and preaches the doctrines which criminals merely practise; the relationship is obvious. In short, by this method of reasoning, those who incline to Socialism can claim the support of almost everything that is good, and those who oppose it are equally free to maintain its connexion with everything bad.

To find a way out of these labyrinthine confusions it is necessary to start at the centre and grasp the clue which lies there.

All forms of Socialism have one element in common; all discussions upon it circle round one central idea; all proposals made in its name start from the same point and aim at the same goal, however different the roads

This common

may be by which they would reach it. element and central idea is the economic state of society; the starting-point of every Socialist system is the present defective state, its objective is a future better one. All the varied and multitudinous forms in which the subject presents itself have this at their core; they are merely different modes of expression determined by the temperament and intellectual bent of their authors or advocates. The imaginative man brings his fancy to bear; he pictures a new society, and you get the Utopias; the philosophic mind seeks an explanation of the present evils and their remedy in abstract principles, and produces treatises on justice, social evolution, and the like; the religious temperament seizes on the aspect congenial to itself and brings in an old religion, as with Christian Socialism, or invents a new one, such as the New Christianity, the New Moral World, or the religion of Humanity; the legal intellect is preoccupied with the juristic basis, and gives us disquisitions on the right to subsistence, the right to the whole produce of labour, and so forth; the economist analyses capital, wages, rent, etc., and their bearing on the problem; the politician turns to legislation or administration, draws up programmes, and organises parties; the prophet cries his message in the market-place and leads a devoted band of followers to found a new community in the wilderness; the practical man forms associations and starts co-operative systems; the fanatic, with his head full of revolution, urges violence, plots, conspiracies and assassinations; the mere sentimentalist sees a vague prospect of satisfying his altruistic emotions more fully than by personal effort, and becomes a subscriber to the cause; the needy, the discontented, the lazy and the envious see the promise of getting something for themselves and welcome it; conversely, the well-to-do, the selfish and the idle see the menace of giving up something and dread it.

But all of them-all who take an active interest in Socialism, whether for or against, or as dispassionate students-are concerned with the same thing at bottom, and that is the economic structure of society, the distribution of wealth, poverty and riches. This is not the whole of the subject-matter, because to many the economic factor is only the means to an end. Their