When there is once established a widely scattered ownership, there is a public opinion that is stronger than any law; and very often (what in modern times is even more remarkable) a law that is really an expression of public opinion. It may be very difficult for modern people to imagine a world in which men are not generally admired for covetousness and crushing their neighbours; but I assure them that such strange patches of an earthly paradise do really remain on earth.

It is true that I believe in fairy tales – in the sense that I marvel so much at what does exist that I am the readier to admit what might.

It is perfectly feasible to imagine an Industrialism that is not capitalist; machinery and its ownership could easily be decentralized – and never more so than in our day when the direction of technological development in itself points to decentralization. If that tendency does not make its mark, it is only because men of power have so decided, and the mass of men have acquiesced.

Give us the luxuries of life and we will dispense with the necessities.

Two points were always put by those suspicious of the Aristotelianism of Aquinas; and they sound to us now very quaint and comic, taken together. One was the view that the stars are personal beings, governing our lives; the other the great general theory that men have one mind between them a view obviously opposed to immortality; that is, to individuality. Both linger, among the Moderns; so string is still the tyranny of the Ancients. Astrology sprawls over the Sunday papers, and the other doctrine has its hundredth form in what is called Communism; or the Soul of the Hive.