“Think, then, you are To-day what Yesterday You were—To-morrow you shall not be less.”
Friendships and loves—the only things really worth while to seasoned natures—have always been. Under all régimes, men have had friends and sweethearts and little ones for the greater glory of their souls; and friends and sweethearts and little ones—the boldest innovators do not assert otherwise—they are likely to have while time is.
These loves and these friendships have found such beautiful expression already that there is little to hope from the future. On the other hand, so far as they are concerned, there is nothing to fear.
What matters, then, in the last analysis the march of public events,—monarchy, republic, social republic, or anarchistic commune,—so that we bear the brunt together, heart to heart, and the great elemental things abide?
“Of the possibility of a free communistic society there can really I take it be no doubt. The question that more definitely presses on us now is one of transition—By what steps shall we, or can we pass to that land of freedom?
“We have supposed a whole people started on its journey by the lifting off of the burden of Fear and Anxiety; but in the long slow ascent of Evolution no sudden miraculous change can be expected; and for this reason alone it is obvious that we can look for no sudden transformation to the communist form. Peoples that have learnt the lesson of ‘trade’ and competition so thoroughly as the modern nations have—each man fighting for his own hand—must take some time to unlearn it. The Sentiment of the Common Life, so long nipped and blighted, must have leisure to grow and expand again; and we must acknowledge that—in order to foster new ideas and new habits—an intermediate stage of Collectivism will be quite necessary. Formulæ like the ‘nationalisation of the land and all the instruments of production,’ though they be vague and indeed impossible of rigorous application, will serve as centres for the growth of the sentiment. The partial application of these formulæ will put folk through a lot of useful drilling in the effort to work together and for common ends.”—Edward Carpenter.