The mood which socialism foments among the labouring classes is precisely analogous to the mood of such a man as this, and its results are analogous likewise.

Its origin, however, being artificial and also obvious in its minutest particulars, the remedy for it, however difficult to apply, is not obscure in its nature.

The mood in question results from a definite, a systematic, and an artificially produced misconception of the structure and the main phenomena, good and evil, of society as it exists to-day, and the different parts played by the different classes composing it.

It has been the object of the present volume to expose, one after another, the individual fallacies of which this general misconception is the result, not with a view to suggesting that in society as it exists to-day there are no grave evils which a true social policy may alleviate, but with a view to promoting between classes, who are at present in needless antagonism, that sane and sober understanding with regard to their respective positions which alone can form the basis of any sound social policy in the future.
Of the individual demands or proposals now put forward by socialists, many point to objects which are individually desirable and are within limits practicable; but what hinders, more than anything else, any successful attempt to realise them is the fact that they are at present placed in a false setting.

They resemble a demand for candles on the part of visitors at an hotel, who would have, if they did not get them, to go to bed in the dark--a demand which would be contested by nobody if it were not that those who made it demanded the candles only as a means of setting fire to the bed-curtains.