Prologue and Plan

¹ Friedrich Muckle: Die grossen Sozialisten.

¹ Faguet: Le Socialisme en 1907, p. 202.

¹ Sudre: Histoire du Communisme, 1848; Thonissen: Le Socialisme dans le passé and Le Socialisme et ses Promesses, 1850. Though necessarily antiquated in their outlook, and although violently hostile to socialism, these two books are still pre-eminently worth reading. The authors had at least conscientiously read the authors whom they criticised.

¹ It may be permissible to recall the words of an eminent, if somewhat fastidious, Victorian regarding his own generation: ‘We show, as a nation, laudable energy and persistence in walking according to the best light we have, but are not quite careful enough, perhaps, to see that our light be not darkness’ (Matthew Arnold, in Culture and Anarchy).