ABSTRACT
Any man who desires, as I do, a fundamental change in the structure of society is forced sooner or later to ask himself the question: what is it that makes one social system seem to him good and another bad? This is undoubtedly very largely a matter of individual caprice. In history, for example, some prefer one epoch, some another. Some admire the polished and civilized ages, while others profess to admire the rude virtues of more barbarous times. One does not wish to think that one’s political opinions result from mere fanciful preferences of this sort, yet I believe that an enormous proportion of political opinion comes, in the last analysis, from some untested, unexamined, almost unconscious love for a certain type of society actual or imagined. I think it is possible to arrive at something less subjective than such tastes and fancies, and I think the advocate of fundamental change, more obviously than any one else, needs to find ways
of judging a social system which do not embody merely his individual tastes.
