communism, by unduly exalting our altruistic impulses, proceeds
upon a false psychological basis. Yet if an instance is to be
chosen, it would be hard to find one more suggestive than that
afforded by the efforts of Robert Owen. The year 1824 saw the
rise of Owen's little community of New Harmony, and the year of
1828 saw the community's final disruption. Individuals had
appropriated to themselves the property designed for all; and
even Owen, who had given to the enterprise his money and his
life, was obliged to admit that men were not yet fitted for the
communistic stage, and that the moment of transition from
individualism to communism had not yet arrived. Men trained
under the old system, with its eager rivalry, its selfish
interests, could not quite yet enter into the spirit of self-
renunciation that communism demands. And Owen, therefore, was
led to put his trust in education as the great moulder of the
minds of men. Through this agency, he hoped, the eager rivalry,
the selfish interests, the sordid love of gain, might be lost in
higher, purer, more disinterested ends; and, animated by that
hope-the hope that in the fullness of time another New Harmony,
free from contention and the disappointments of the old one,
might serve to immortalize his name-animated by that hope, Owen
passed the last thirty years of his life; and with that hope
still before his eyes he died.

But years now have passed since Owen lived; the second New
Harmony has not yet been seen; the so-called rational system of
education has not yet transformed the impulses or the aims of
men; and the communist of today, with a history of two thousand
years of failure behind him, in the same pathetic confidence
still looks for the realization of his dreams to the communism of