Page:American Journal of Sociology Volume 1.djvu/68

 56 socialists, for the primary conceptions of the latter are distinct, and as to priority in time the one school has almost as much right to the title as the other. Sprague gives this definition of socialism: "It is the effort of society to perfect its own life and accomplish its own destiny." While this author has a more definite conception of socialism, yet this serves very well as a characterization of the socialism of a large portion of so-called Christian socialists.

IDEAL NOT OF STATUS BUT OF METHOD.

This leads to a statement of the basal principle of Christian socialism, which at the same time affords a fundamental distinction between it and so-called "secular" socialism. The ideal of Christian socialism is a method; the ideal of socialism is a status. Socialism aims at an organization of society in which the state shall be the source of production of goods and the means and arbiter of distribution. Each shall contribute according to his abilities and receive according to his needs. The various more or less fantastic embodiments of this conception in socialistic Utopias are none of them essential to the fundamental idea. They are merely attempts of the imagination to make concrete an ideal not yet realizable to defective human nature. Christian socialism, however, formulates no ultimate status as an ideal, even if such a status is a sub-conscious assumption. Essentially concerned with conduct, its ideal is a method of social procedure; an attempted realization of some of the doctrines of Christ in an environment more or less unconformable with them. This ultimate social status, which is merely a sub-conscious speculation, may or may not be the ideal of socialism; and the like is true of the particular conception of social procedure, which is the ideal of Christian socialism. Perhaps if each were to clearly define its position concerning what to each is of secondary consideration, there would be practically an identity of status if not of procedure. But neither does this; for socialism emphasizes to the exclusion of all other considerations a status,—social or