mind before he came into touch with the Socialist movement, or with Socialists at all. In his Art lectures, delivered as early as 1878, we find passages in which the essentials of his after-teaching of Socialism are clearly set forth.
In saying that Morris' Socialism was Utopian rather than Scientific, I mean that his Socialism was not derived from any logical inferences from economic analyses of industrial history, but from his whole conception of life. He did not concern himself so much with the science of wealth, or rather money-making, as with the art of living. While ordaining absolute equality of wealth conditions for all as essential to the realisation of the Co-operative Commonwealth, he regarded all readjustments of economic conditions as a means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. The great object of Socialism was to place all men and women on a footing of equality and brotherhood in order that they might one and all have the utmost possible freedom to live the fullest and happiest lives. The selfish striving for gain, the fettering of one's fellow-men in order to benefit by their oppression or misfortune, the ambition for personal superiority or privilege of any kind, were motives wholly abhorrent to his nature.
He did not regard mere quantity of riches or wealth as being important objects of Socialism. Though in no degree favouring asceticism or parsimony of living, he nevertheless believed that in the main the greater the simplicity of our mode of living, the greater would be the happiness and the nobler the achievements of our lives. This idea is expressed in all his descriptions of what he pictured as ideal conditions of fellowship and work—as, for example, in his song 'The Day is Coming,' in his lectures on 'Useful Work versus Useless Toil,' and 'How we live, and how we might live,' and in his 'John Ball' and 'News from Nowhere.'
So much indeed was he out of sympathy with all mere stuffing of life with furniture, so to speak, with all elabora-
