THE SOUL OF MAN

The chief advantage that would result from the establishment of Socialism is undoubtedly the fact that Socialism would relieve us from that sordid necessity of living for others which in the present condition of things presses so hardly upon almost everybody. In fact scarcely anyone at all escapes. Now and then in the course of the century a great man of science like Darwin; a great poet like Keats; a fine critical spirit like M. Renan; a supreme artist like Flaubert has been able to isolate himself to keep himself out of reach of the clamorous 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 and to the incomparable and lasting gain of the whole world. These however are exceptions.