the deity. Solon the Athenian says, "You ask me, Croesus, about human affairs, me who know that the divinity (tò 0ɛčov) is altogether jealous, and causing disturbance,” (1. 32) (лāv ἐὸν θονερόν τε καὶ ταραχῶδες) and closes his advice to Croesus, with the words, "for the deity (ó cóc) having shown a glimpse of blessedness to many, has destroyed them root and branch." 1. 32.*

Amasis the Egyptian says to Polycrates, "But your great successes do not please me, because I know that the deity (Tò Octov) is jealous." (3. 40. "I never heard of any one who prospered in all he undertook, who was not finally destroyed root and branch." (3. 40).

Artabanus the Persian, dissuading Xerxes from the great invasion of Greece, says, "You see how the deity (ó 0εó) strikes with his thunderbolts the large animals and does not permit them to make a show of themselves, while the small ones do not annoy him at all; and you see how he always hurls his bolts against the tallest buildings and trees, for the deity (ó có) loves to lop off everything that exalts itself. So now a large army is destroyed by a small one as follows. When the deity (ó 0ɛós) being jealous sends fear or thunder among them, they perish utterly, then, in a manner unworthy of themselves, for the deity does not allow anybody else than himself to have lofty thoughts." (7. 10).

Farther on, Artabanus says, almost in the previously quoted words of Solon, "The deity (ó 0ɛós) having given us a taste of sweet life, is found to be jealous of his gift." (7. 46).

Any one in comparing these sentiments, almost identical, uttered by so many persons so differently circumstanced, is forced to believe that Herodotus is setting forth his own opinion. Long speeches like those of Solon and Artabanus cannot even be regarded as free reproductions of actual speeches of those persons, like the speeches in Thucydides. These have no more than a dramatic reality. They belong as much to Herodotus as Macbeth's speeches do to Shakespeare. * Sophocles has nearly the same language,

"For who is there of men

That more of blessing knows,

Than just a little while

To seem to prosper well,

And having seemed, to fall?"-O. T., 1189.

From expressions of the jealousy of the deity we pass to stories illustrating it. The whole story of Croesus and his interview with Solon, has no other object than simply to illus. trate that great prosperity must meet with sudden downfall. As far as character goes, Croesus was not very bad. He had conquered the Ionic colonies, it is true, but had treated them very mildly. Indeed, he had the advantage over his predecessors in piety toward the Greek oracles. It was not for any dark crime that he was overthrown. This is the reason: "After the departure of Solon, retribution from God (véμeois èx 0ɛoũ) overtook Croesus, because, as I conjecture he thought himself the most blessed of men." (1. 34). (1.34).

The famous story of Polycrates is a little stronger illustration. Croesus had the sin of an ancestor put into his account, and had boasted a little of prosperity, but Polycrates had no ancestor's sins on his head; had listened to his monitor Amasis as Croesus had not to Solon, and had even tried to bring some bad luck on himself by throwing away his choicest treasure. He cannot, however, divest himself of his good luck. His ring returns in the belly of a fish, and he has to compensate for his good fortune with utter ruin in the end.

The crowning illustration of this principle may be said to be the history of Herodotus as a whole, the subject being the Humiliation of the pride of Xerxes, the rest being preliminary and episodical.

It may be interesting, though not adding much weight to these expressions and stories, the main object of which is to illustrate this theory, to notice that the same idea appears in more insignificant allusions through the history. When two hundred Persian ships were destroyed rounding Euboea, he says, "all this was done by the deity, that the Persian fleet might be made equal to the Greek, and not be much larger." (8.13). It is the levelling process referred to in the words of Artabanus.

With such a deity over the world the dark views of human life that Herodotus records and expresses are natural. When the mother of Cleobis and Bito prayed for her sons the greatest blessing man could receive, the answer to her prayer was their immediate death. "Thus god clearly showed that it was better to die than live," says Solon. (1.31).

Artabanus says, "In this life that is so brief, no man is so happy as not to wish many times, and not a single time, to die rather than live. For the calamities that fall upon us, and the sicknesses that disturb us make life, though really short seem long. So death, on account of the wretchedness of life, has become the sweetest refuge to man." (7.46).

The leaders of the Greek say, "There is no mortal nor ever will be, to whom evils were not mingled with good from his very birth. The greater the man the greater the misfortune." (7.203).

Man is altogether accident, says Solon (¿vůρwñоç лáv ovμçopη). No one living is happy, he says. (1.86). This remark of Solon may have been a sort of commonplace of the time. The closing lines of Oedipus Tyrannos and the opening lines of the Trachinian Maidens contain the same idea, and in the latter place it is called an old saying.

That Herodotus subscribes to these gloomy views of life appears in his account of Ameinocles, who picked up so much treasure from the Persian shipwrecks off Magnesia that he became very wealthy. He adds, "The sad disaster of having killed his own son distressed this man, too." (xai Toutov). 7.190. xai toutov could only mean he had his troubles, too, as all of us have.

The words which he puts into the mouth of Xerxes, "It is better with all confidence to suffer half the ills, than fearing everything before hand, never to suffer at all.

To those who are determined to act, gain for the most part is wont to accrue," (7. 50) seem almost like his own protest to himself against the inertia of fatalism, and an encouragement

to action.

The words of Themistocles, "To men who make reasonable plans, corresponding results are for the most part wont to follow, but to those who have not made reasonable plans the deity (ó 0ɛós) does not show indulgence of their whims," (8. 60, III.) seems like another protest of his own against fatalism and an encouragement to deliberation.

ARTICLE VII.—THE NATURE AND PROGRESS OF

TRUE SOCIALISM.

HISTORY has lately been said to move in cycles and epicycles; its phenomena tend to recur, at intervals, in regular succession. An anarchic condition may be followed by despotism, that by democracy, and that, again, by anarchy; yet the second anarchy is not like the first, and when it, in turn, yields to despotism, that also is different from the former despotism. The course of history has been in a circle, but it is a circle whose center is moving. The same phenomena may recur indefinitely; but at each recurrence the whole course of events will have advanced, and the existing condition will be found to have had its parallel, though not its precise duplicate, in some previous condition. There is nothing permanent in history, and there is nothing new. That which is will pass away, and that which will take its place will be like something that has already existed and passed away. History moves, like the earth, in an orbit; but, like the earth, it moves in an orbit the center of which is describing a greater orbit.

That any particular social condition has existed in the past, and has passed away, is no evidence that it will not return, but is rather an evidence that it will return, though in a different form. That socialism existed in the highly developed village-community of the middle ages, and that it existed in a ruder form in antiquity, is, as far as it goes, an evidence that it may appear again, though in a shape adapted to its new surroundings. The earlier cycles of the historic movement are too distant for tracing, and it is impossible to say how many times it may have appeared and disappeared in prehistoric times; but the last cycle may be traced with reasonable distinctness. We have been made familiar, of late, with the village-community of medieval times. Beginning at that point, we may trace the economic history of Europe through a series of conditions growing successively less and less socialistic, until we reach the aphelion of the system, the extreme

anti-socialistic point, and begin slowly to tend in an opposite direction. I should locate this turning point at a period about a hundred years ago. While Adam Smith was formulating the present system of Political Economy, the world was, in economic matters, at its farthest limit in the direction of individualism, and was about commencing slowly to progress in a socialistic condition.

It is necessary to dissociate from the meaning of the term socialism, as I intend to use it, the signification of lawlessness and violence which is apt to be attached to it. I do not mean by socialism a certain rampant political thing which calls itself by that name, and whose menacing attitude at present is uniting well meaning men against it. The socialism which destroys property and arms itself to resist law is rather socialistic Jacobinism, or communism of the Parisian type. Political socialism, even when moderate and law-abiding, has no right to the exclusive use of the generic term; it is a part only of a very general movement, the signs of which are to be seen in other things than communistic newspapers and Lehr-und Wehr- Vereins.

I mean by socialism, not a doctrine, but a practical movement, tending not to abolish the right of property, but to vest the ownership of it in social organizations, rather than in individuals. The organizations may be private corporations, village-communities, cities, states, or nations, provided only that working men be represented in them. The object of the movement is to secure a distribution of wealth founded on justice, instead of one determined by the actual results of the struggle of competition. Wherever numbers of men unite in the owning of capital, as they already do in the performing of labor, and determine the division of the proceeds by some appeal to a principle of justice, rather than by a general scramble, we have a form of socialism.

The word thus signifies a more highly developed condition of social organization. Within the great organism which we term the state, there are many specific organisms of an industrial character. Such are nearly all our manufactories. These have the marks of high organic development in a minute differentiation of parts; labor is minutely subdivided in these