About the author Ernest Belfort Bax (1854-1926), was an English Socialist, journalist, economist, and philosopher; who helped William Morris found the Socialist League, co-edited its organ 'Commonweal'; joined the Social Democratic Federation after the League became anarchist, and edited the paper 'Justice.' His parents were strict Nonconformists who came from families that had suffered religious persecution. Ernest was educated at home by private tutors and as a young man been encouraged to read John Stuart Mill and Herbert Spencer. In his books The Religion of Socialism (1887) and Ethics of Socialism (1889), Bax argued that Christian ethics was gradually being replaced by the Utilitarian idea that ethical change was produced by the needs of society rather than from a supernatural level. Bax believed that this would develop into a "new ethic" called socialism. The highest expression of this new ethic was "self-sacrifice for the cause of true social change and human consciousness". Bax was one of the ablest, and in literary terms at least, most aggressive exponents of English socialism. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.