Page:The Works of H G Wells Volume 4.pdf/431

 of possessions if need be, very gladly lose it, to change the present order of things in a comprehensive manner.

I am quite convinced that there are numbers of much richer and more influential people who are of his way of thinking. Much more likely to obstruct the way to Socialism is the ignorance, the want of courage, the stupid want of imagination of the very poor, too shy and timid and clumsy to face any change they can evade! But, even with them, popular education is doing its work; and I do not fear but that in the next generation we shall find Socialists even in the slums. The unimaginative person who owns some little bit of property, an acre or so of freehold land, or a hundred pounds in the savings bank, will no doubt be the most tenacious passive resister to Socialistic ideas; and such, I fear, we must reckon, together with the insensitive rich, as our irreconcilable enemies, as irremovable pillars of the present order. The mean and timid elements in "human nature" are, and will be, I admit, against Socialism; but they are not all "human nature," not half human nature. And when, in the whole history of the world, have meanness and timidity won a struggle? It is passion, it is enthusiasm, and indignation that mould the world to their will—and I cannot see how any one can go into the back streets of London, or any large British town, and not be filled up with shame, and passionate resolve to end so grubby and mean a state of affairs as is displayed there. I don't think the "human nature" argument against the possibility of Socialism will hold water.