Not even upon the completion of this remarkable volume, however, was Mr. Kelly quite ready to take the final step of identifying himself with the Socialist party. So strong was that nature within him which, without theological implications, we may call the spiritual or religious, that he would have been glad if he could have seen the possibility of attaining the ends which Socialism contemplates through a movement essentially subjective, that is to say, through developments of the intellectual and moral nature of man which would impel all human beings, irrespective of class distinctions, to work together spontaneously and unselfishly, for the creation of a wholesome environment and essential justice in social relations. It was this feeling that led him to write the anonymously published, "Practical Programme for Workingmen," in which essentially socialistic measures are advocated, but with strong emphasis upon the vital importance of character and sympathy.
When a strong-minded man of strict intellectual honesty has thus advanced, step by step, from one position to another, at every stage of his progress surveying the whole field of human struggle; observing it dispassionately, as a scientific evolutionist; observing it sympathetically, "as one who loves his fellowmen," comes at last to the socialistic conclusion, and devotes the last weeks of his life to the preparation of a new statement of socialistic doctrine, the fact is more significant, as an indication of the way mankind is going, than are all the cries of "lo here, lo there" that arise from the din of party discussion. In Mr. Kelly's case the significance was deepened by all the circumstances of taste and association. Intensely democratic in his relations to men, Mr. Kelly was in breeding, in culture, in delicacy of feeling an aristocrat of the purest type. Educated at Columbia and at Cambridge, his university acquaintance and his political and professional activities in New York and in Paris had kept him continually in touch with what the socialist calls "the capitalist class." In joining the Socialist party he jeopardized friendships and associations that meant more to him than anything else save the approval of his own conscience.