Page:The Life of William Morris.djvu/555

146 of the basis of society? If he can do both, let him do so, and make his conscience surer. But if, as must generally be the case, he must choose between suffering some pangs of conscience and divesting himself of his power to further a great principle, "then, I think," Morris concludes, "he is right to choose the first."

It is true that there is a third alternative, that of complete individual renunciation, which, illogical as it may be, has often, as with the earliest Christians, with the mendicant friars of the great religious revival of the thirteenth century, and since then in many splendid isolated instances, affected mankind more powerfully through the imagination than they have ever been affected by arguments or enactments. If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell what thou hast, and give to the poor, and come, follow me. Such a course would have accorded with Morris's own early dreams at Oxford of a monastic life, lived by friends in common in the single pursuit of poverty and art. But now it seemed to him to mean practically, though not formally, abandoning the principles for which Socialists contended, and giving up the struggle in a spirit not far removed from cowardice. "If these were ordinary times of peace, I might be contented amidst my discontent to settle down into an ascetic, such a man as I should respect even now. But I don't see the peace or feel it: on the contrary, fate or what not has forced me to feel war, and lays hands on me as a recruit: therefore do I find it not only lawful to my conscience, but even compulsory on it, to do what in times of peace would not perhaps be lawful, and certainly would not be compulsory. If I am wrong I am wrong, and there is an end of it. Whatever hope or life there is in me is staked on the success of the cause. Of