faults of detail than to an impatient philosophy, which aims at
creating a new world without sufficient preparation in the opinions
and feelings of ordinary men and women.

But although I do not believe that Communism can be realized
immediately by the spread of Bolshevism, I do believe that, if
Bolshevism falls, it will have contributed a legend and a heroic
attempt without which ultimate success might never have come. A
fundamental economic reconstruction, bringing with it very
far-reaching changes in ways of thinking and feeling, in philosophy
and art and private relations, seems absolutely necessary if
industrialism is to become the servant of man instead of his master.
In all this, I am at one with the Bolsheviks; politically, I criticize
them only when their methods seem to involve a departure from their
own ideals.

There is, however, another aspect of Bolshevism from which I differ
more fundamentally. Bolshevism is not merely a political doctrine; it
is also a religion, with elaborate dogmas and inspired scriptures.
When Lenin wishes to prove some proposition, he does so, if possible,
by quoting texts from Marx and Engels. A full-fledged Communist is not
merely a man who believes that land and capital should be held in
common, and their produce distributed as nearly equally as possible.
He is a man who entertains a number of elaborate and dogmatic
beliefs--such as philosophic materialism, for example--which may be
true, but are not, to a scientific temper, capable of being known to
be true with any certainty. This habit, of militant certainty about
objectively doubtful matters, is one from which, since the
Renaissance, the world has been gradually emerging, into that temper
of constructive and fruitful scepticism which constitutes the