Page:James Ramsay MacDonald - The Socialist Movement.pdf/252

 248 forward swing. It has moved onwards. Social organisation has now to be carried to a further stage. And what has to be the subject of this organisation? It can be but one thing—economic power. The individualist epoch created that power, organised it, and broke down under its load. Like the fisherman in the Eastern tale who liberated the genii, individualism has been unable to control its own discoveries. The community, the state, the whole of the people—under whatever name it may be the pleasure of different men to designate it—must now take over this power, bridle it and harness it and make it do social work. This is the genesis of the Socialist movement: this is Socialism.

But as these changes in organisation, these fluctuations between individualism and sociality, subserve the end of human liberty and progress, so the motive force behind Socialism is not merely mechanical perfection and social economy, but life itself. Hence, around it are ranged the living impulses of religion, of ethics, of art, of literature, those creative impulses which fill man's heart from an inexhaustible store of hope and aspiration, and which make him find not only his greatest happiness but also the very reason for life itself, in pursuing the pilgrim road which, mounting up over the hills and beyond the horizon, winds towards the ideal.