applied in practice as an everyday matter, yet the negative side of the question we can all see, and most of us cannot help trying to fill up the void made by the necessary termination of the merely militant period of 289 Socialism. The present society will be gone, with all its paraphernalia of checks and safeguards; that we know for certain. No less surely we know what the foundation of the new society will be. What will the new society build on that foundation of freedom and co-operation? That is the problem on which we can do no more than speculate.
It must be understood therefore that in giving this outline of the life of the future, we are not dogmatising, but only expressing our opinion of what will probably happen, which is of course coloured by our personal wishes and hopes. We ask our readers, therefore, not to suppose that we have here any intention of making a statement of facts, or prophesying in detail the exact form which things will take; though in the main, what we here write will be accepted by the majority of Socialists.
As to the political side of the new society, civilisation undertakes the government of persons by direct coercion. Socialism would deal primarily with the administration of things, and only secondarily and indirectly would have to do 290 with personal habit and conduct. Civil law, therefore, which is an institution essentially based on private property, would cease to exist, and criminal law, which would tend to become obsolete, would, while it existed, concern itself solely with the protection of the person. It is clear, therefore, that there is no foundation for the outcry sometimes raised against Socialism for proposing to interfere with the liberty of the individual, which would be, in fact, only limited by the natural and inevitable restrictions of individual will incident to all societies whatever.
As to the machinery by means of which this administration of things would be carried out, we ask our readers to try to conceive of some such conditions as these.