AT what point a history of socialism should begin is a question which
might give occasion to high argument. There are some who hold that
we merely becloud our judgment if we allow ourselves to speak of
socialism before the middle of the eighteenth century, or perhaps even
somewhat later. On this view socialism is essentially a manifestation
of the proletarian spirit; or, if socialism is not necessarily proletarian
in character and origin, it at least postulates a society which tends to be
comprehensive in its membership. Accordingly, it is suggested that
a society which assumes for its efficient working the existence of a slave
population, denied all rights, may at times speak a language suggestive
of socialism, but it can know nothing of socialism as that word has
been understood in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The
existence of a serf or slave population may in certain respects add a
complication to life; but in other directions it quite obviously enor-
mously simplifies the social and political problems of existence, as these
are presented to that section of the population who are not slaves.
On this view, a history of socialism should probably begin among
these first ripples and disturbances which presaged the deluge of the
French Revolution.

As against this view, which looks on socialism as something which
cannot be dissociated from the social and political conditions of the
last century and a half, there are some who carry their excavations for
the roots of socialism not merely to ancient Greece, but to ancient
China and to the early days of the children of Israel, and who accord
a place in the socialist temple to Moses, in virtue of certain provisions
in the Mosaic Law; and to Isaiah, in virtue of his poetic sensitiveness
to the wrongs of this world.

If we are strict, it is probably to the former of these views that we
should incline. We shall see presently how futile to our present-day
mind is the justice and the equality of a State which attains these
elevated aims by building on the slavery and oppression of the over-
whelming majority of the population. Yet it does not follow that the
history of socialism can exclude all that happened before the eighteenth
century. Lycurgus and the polity of Sparta may in fact have little to
teach us. The community of life which Minos introduced into Crete
may have no point of contact with our modern needs. Plato, to
ascend to higher names, may have dreamed a dream which would be
but a nightmare to-day, if any attempt were made to realise it. Yet

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