is gaining. Equity in this connection seems not to belong in the repertory of socialist concepts. It is at this point — the point of a common ground of argument — that the discrepancy occurs which stands in the way, not only of an eventual agreement between the socialists and their conservative critics, but even of their meeting one another's reasoning with any substantial effect. In the equipment of common-sense ideas on the basis of which the conservatives reason on this matter, there is included the conventional article of ownership, as a prime fact ; in the common-sense basis of socialistic thinking this conventional premise has no secure place. There
■spiraUon for a more "eqnluble" redisLiibntion of wealtli, & resdjiisunent of the acbeme ol ownership with some improTed safeguarding of the "reasonable " property claims of all member* of the eommunitf. What "socialist" reform commonly meana to tbia contingent of well-to-do irregulars is aome scheme of equal rigbla of ownership for all. Whereas to aocialislfi of the line equal rights of ownership is as idle a proposiUon as an equal right of citizens to sell their votes. Instead of a reform of owneiBhlp the aociatlsta conl«mp1at« the traceleaa disappearance of ownership.
is, therefore, a discrepancy in respect of the metaphysics underlying the knowledge and reasoning of the two parties to the controversy, and the outlook for a common understanding is accordingly vain. No substantial agreement upon a point of knowledge or conviction is possible between persons who proceed from disparate preconceptions.
I Still the conservative reformers and the iconoclasts have a good deal in common. The prevalent
' habit of mind of both classes is a hybrid product of conventional principles and matter-of-fact insight. But these two contrasted grounds