nt, obedient to which State and
Society have hitherto risen and developed. Eugen Richter and those who
share his views may take comfort: if Socialism really implies the silly
and unnatural aims imputed to it by them, it will go to pieces, and
without the aid of the "Irrelehren" of Richter. But it happens that
there is no political party that stands as squarely and logically upon
the evolutionary field as the Social Democratic.

Quite as unfounded as all the other objections are the remarks of Eugene
Richter: "For a social condition, such as the Socialists want, the
people must be angels." As is well known, there are no angels, nor do we
need any. Partly are men influenced by conditions, and partly are
conditions influenced by men, and the latter will be increasingly the
case in the measure that men learn to know the nature of the social
system that they themselves rear, and in the measure that the experience
thus gathered is consciously applied by them by corresponding changes in
their social organization,--and that is Socialism. What we need is not
other people, but wiser and more intelligent people than most of them
are to-day. It is with the end in view of making people wiser and more
intelligent that we agitate, Herr Richter, and that we publish works
like this one.

[214] It is surprising that, considering the fathomless blockishness of
our adversaries, none has yet claimed that in Socialist society everyone
would receive an equal portion of food and an equal quantity of linen
and clothing so as to "crown the work of uniformity." Such a claim is
quite stupid enough to expect its being made by our opponents.

[215] Fourier made this the subject of a brilliant argument, although he
ran into utopianism in the elaboration of his ideas.

[216] Condorcet demands in his plan of education: "Education must be
free, equal, general, bodily, mental, industrial and political, and it
must aim at real and actual equality."

Likewise Rousseau in his "Political Economy": "Above all, education must
be public, equal and mixed, for the purpose of raising men and
citizens."

Aristotle also demands: "Seeing the State has but one object, it must
also provide one and the same education for all its members. The care
hereof must be the concern of the State and not a private affair."

[217] Eugene Richter among them, in his "Irrelehren."

[218] "America's Bildungswesen," by Prof. Emil Hausknecht.

[219] "The person who has led an h