Towards democracy

A Note on “Towards Democracy”

(Reprinted from THE LABOUR PropuHeET, May, 1894)

Havinc sometimes been asked questions about “Towards Democracy” which I found it difficult to answer, I will try and shape a few thoughts about it here.

Quite a long time ago (say when I was about 25, and living at Cambridge) I wanted to write some sort of a book which should address itself very personally and closely to any one who cared to read it—establish so to speak an intimate personal relation between myself and the reader; and during succeeding years I made several attempts to realise this ideaof which beginnings one or two in verse may be found in a little yolume entitled ‘‘ Narcissus and other Poems,” now well out of print, which I published in 1873. None of these attempts satisfied me however, and after a time I began to think the quest was an unreasonable one—unreasonable because while it might not be difficult for any one with a pliant and sympathetic disposition to touch certain chords in any given individual that he might meet, it seemed impossible to hope that a d004—which cannot in any way adapt itself to the idiosyncrasies of its reader—could find the key of the personalities into whose hands it should happen to come. For this it would be necessary to suppose, and to find, an absolutely common ground to all individuals (all at any rate who might have reached a certain stage of thought and experience)—and to write the book on and from that common ground: but this seemed at that time quite impracticable.