ABSTRACT
IN bringing this analysis to a close, my immediate purpose will have been served if I succeed in impressing upon Socialists the fact that the solu- tion of the social problem is not quite so simple a matter as probably the majority have been accustomed to suppose—that the confusion which has followed attempts to give practical application to their principles is for the most part due to the fact that they do not finally touch reality. For though it may be admitted that the present distribution of wealth, involving extremes of riches and poverty, is an evil of the first magnitude, such maldistribution is yet only the outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual disease. Any political activity which would treat the social problem as a purely materialist issue is doomed from its first inception.
