h
society and the individual, since it will be a natural product and not a
parasitic product of the new social organization. Just so, the nervous
system of a mammal is the regulating apparatus of its organism; it is,
certainly, more complex than that of the organism of a fish or of a
mollusc, but it has not, for that reason, tyrannically stifled the
autonomy of the other organs and anatomical machinery, or of the cells
in their living confederation.

It is understood, then, that to refute socialism, something more is
needed than the mere repetition of the current objections against that
artificial and sentimental socialism which still continues to exist, I
confess, in the nebulous mass of popular ideas. But every day it is
losing ground before the intelligent partisans--workingmen, middle-class
or aristocrats--of scientific socialism which armed--thanks to the
impulse received from the genius of Marx--with all the best-established
inductions of modern science, is triumphing over the old objections
which our adversaries, through force of mental custom, still repeat, but
which have long been left behind by contemporary thought, together with
the utopian socialism which provoked them.

The same reply must be made to the second part of the objection, with
regard to the mode by which the advent of socialism will be
accomplished.

One of the inevitable and logical consequences of utopian and artificial
socialism is to think that the architectonic construction proposed by
such or such a reformer, ought to be and can be put into practice in a
single day by a decree.

In this sense it is quite true that the utopian illusion of empirical
socialism is in opposition to the scientific law of evolution, and,
_looked at in this way_, I combatted it in my book on _Socialismo e
Criminalita_, because at that time (1883) the ideas of scientific or
Marxian socialism were not yet generally disseminated in Italy.

A political party or a scientific theory are natural products which must
pass through the vital phases of infancy and youth, before reaching
complete development. It was, then, inevitable that, before becoming
scientific or _positif_ (fact-founded), socialism, in Italy as in other
countries, should pass through the infantile phases of clannish
exclusiveness--the era when socialism was confined to organizations of
_manual_ laborers--and of nebulous romanticism which, as it gives to the
word _revolution_ a narrow and incomplete