The persons to whom I refer consist mainly of academic students, professors, clergymen, and also of emotional ladies, who enjoy the attention of footmen in faultless liveries, and say their prayers out of prayer-books with jewelled clasps.

All these persons unite in the general assertion that, whatever may be amiss with the world, the capitalistic system is responsible for it, and that somehow or other this system ought to be altered.

But when we ask them to specify the details as to which alteration is necessary--what precisely are the parts of it which they wish to abolish and what, if these were abolished, they would introduce as a substitute--one of them says one thing, another of them says another, and nobody says anything on which three of them could act in concert.
Now, if socialism were confined to such persons as these, who are in America spoken of as the "parlour socialists," it would not only be impossible to tell what socialism actually was, but what it was or was not would be immaterial to any practical man.

As a matter of fact, however, between socialism of this negligible kind--this sheet-lightning of sentiment reflected from a storm elsewhere--and the socialism which is really a factor to be reckoned with in the life of nations, we can start with drawing a line which, when once drawn, is unmistakable.
Socialism being avowedly a theory which, in the first instance at all events, addresses itself to the many as distinct from and opposed to the few, it is only or mainly the fact of its adoption by the many which threatens to render it a practical force in politics.

Its practical importance accordingly depends upon two things--firstly, on its possessing a form sufficiently definite to unite what would otherwise be a mass of heterogeneous units, by developing in all of them a common temper and purpose; and, secondly, on the number of those who can be taught to adopt and welcome it.