Seven Lectures DELIVERED ON VARIOUS OCCASIONS BY WILLIAM MORRIS AUTHOR OF “THE EARTHLY PARADISE” LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. LONDON, NEW YORK, AND BOMBAY 1896 All rights reserved...

The word Revolution, which we Socialists are so often forced to use, has a terrible sound in most people’s ears, even when we have explained to them that it does not necessarily mean a change accompanied by riot and all kinds of violence, and cannot mean a change made mechanically and in the teeth of opinion by a group of men who have somehow managed to seize on the executive power for the moment.  Even when we explain that we use the word revolution in its etymological sense, and mean by it a c

What is the state of parties in England to-day?  How shall we enumerate them?  The Whigs, who stand first on the list in my title, are considered generally to be the survival of an old historical party once looked on as having democratic tendencies, but now the hope of all who would stand soberly on the ancient ways.  Besides these, there are Tories also, the descendants of the stout defenders of Church and State and the divine right of kings. Now, I don’t mean to say but that at the back of thi

It is true that the Norman Conquest found a certain kind of feudality in existence in England—a feudality which was developed from the customs of the Teutonic tribes with no admixture of Roman law; and also that even before the Conquest this country was slowly beginning to be mixed up with the affairs of the Continent of Europe, and that not only with the kindred nations of Scandinavia, but with the Romanized countries also.  But the Conquest of Duke William did introduce the complete Feudal sys

Every age has had its hopes, hopes that look to something beyond the life of the age itself, hopes that try to pierce into the future; and, strange to say, I believe that those hopes have been stronger not in the heyday of the epoch which has given them birth, but rather in its decadence and times of corruption: in sober truth it may well be that these hopes are but a reflection in those that live happily and comfortably of the vain longings of those others who suffer with little power of expres

In considering the Aims of Art, that is, why men toilsomely cherish and practise Art, I find myself compelled to generalize from the only specimen of humanity of which I know anything; to wit, myself.  Now, when I think of what it is that I desire, I find that I can give it no other name than happiness.  I want to be happy while I live; for as for death, I find that, never having experienced it, I have no conception of what it means, and so cannot even bring my mind to bear upon it.  I know what

The above title may strike some of my readers as strange.  It is assumed by most people nowadays that all work is useful, and by most well-to-to people that all work is desirable.  Most people, well-to-do or not, believe that, even when a man is doing work which appears to be useless, he is earning his livelihood by it—he is “employed,” as the phrase goes; and most of those who are well-to-do cheer on the happy worker with congratulations and praises, if he is only “industrious” enough and depri

Perhaps some of my readers may think that the above title is not a correct one: it may be said, a new epoch is always dawning, change is always going on, and it goes on so gradually that we do not know when we are out of an old epoch and into a new one.  There is truth in that, at least to this extent, that no age can see itself: we must stand some way off before the confused picture with its rugged surface can resolve itself into its due order, and seem to be something with a definite purpose c