Owen learned it probably from Godwin, and he did not disguise it.  His numerous works enforce it ad nauseam.  He began the propagation of his gospel by his “New View of Society, or Essays on the formation of the human character, preparatory to the development of a plan for gradually ameliorating the condition of mankind,” which he dedicated to the Prince Regent. [Footnote:  3rd ed. 1817.  The Essays had appeared separately in 1813-14.] Here he lays down that “any general character, from the best to the worst, may be given to any community, even to the world at large, by the application of proper means; which means are to a great extent at the command and under the control of those who have influence in the affairs of men.” [Footnote:  P. 19.] The string on which he continually harps is that it is the cardinal error in government to suppose that men are responsible for their vices and virtues, and therefore for their actions and characters.  These result from education and institutions, and can be transformed automatically by transforming those agencies.  Owen founded several short-lived journals to diffuse his theories.  The first number of the New Moral World (1834-36) [Footnote:  This was not a journal, but a series of pamphlets which appeared in 1836-1844.  Other publications of Owen were:  Outline of the Rational System of Society (6th ed., Leeds, 1840); The Revolution in the Mind and Practice of the Human Race, or the coming change from Irrationality to Rationality (1849); The Future of the Human Race, or a great, glorious and peaceful Revolution, near at hand, to be effected through the agency of departed spirits of good and superior men and women (1853); The New Existence of Man upon Earth, Parts i.-viii., 1854-55.] proclaimed the approach of an ideal society in which there will be no ignorance, no poverty, and no charity—­a system “which will ensure the happiness of the human race throughout all future ages,” to replace one “which, so long as it shall be maintained, must produce misery to all.”  His own experimental attempt to found such a society on a miniature scale in America proved a ludicrous failure.

It is to be observed that in these socialist theories the conception of Progress as indefinite tends to vanish or to lose its significance.  If the millennium can be brought about at a stroke by a certain arrangement of society, the goal of development is achieved; we shall have reached the term, and shall have only to live in and enjoy the ideal state—­a menagerie of happy men.  There will be room for further, perhaps indefinite, advance in knowledge, but civilisation in its social character becomes stable and rigid.  Once man’s needs are perfectly satisfied in a harmonious environment there is no stimulus to cause further changes, and the dynamic character of history disappears.