aroundworldortra00peebiala-1

ance.
FROM NEW ZEALAND TO CHINA. 109
Cannibal eats cannibal, and clinging, parasitic souls
feast upon the magnetic life of other souls. Such is selfishness,
— the devouring, corroding selfishness of the world I
And yet who has not pictured and prayed for the prophets'
realization of " Zion " ? or who has not dreamed of that
golden age where love shall be law, where the only rivalry
shall be in doing the most good to others, where harmonial
souls shall breathe benedictions of peace and good-will, and
where a competitive, clutching self-appropriativeness shall
have become a half-forgotten tradition ? May we not still
hope that, before the sunset of this .century, co-operative
leagues, and communistic fraternities, may dot the land,
cities of light set upon a thousand hills.
PLATO'S REPUBLIC.
The most eminent philosophers and sages of antiquity,
when mediumistically illumined by heavenly wisdom, either
conceived or wrote of a coming communism, — a state of
society where every one would be respected according to his
worth, where individual happiness would be sought in seeking
the happiness of all, and where the isolated family would
widen out into co-operative combinations, and these into
spiritual families, with wisdom and love the governing
powers.
Among the more prominent of this school was the Grecian
Plato. This prince of philosophers, flourishing some time
before the Christian era, defined a well-ordered, if not an
ideally perfect state of social life, to be known as a " republic."
Though treating largely of justice and charity, he
considered absolute " communism of property " an indispensable
condition. He lived unmarried, had no children, died
a celibate!
Looseness in the use
discussions.
Sm THOMAS MORE's UTOPIA.
of phraseology causes many fruitless
" Socialism " and " communism " are not inter-
as