meaning, is always fed with
false hope by the illusion that a social organism can be radically
changed in a single day with four rifle-shots, just as a monarchical
regime could thus be converted into a republican regime.

But it is infinitely easier to change the political envelope of a social
organization,--because such a change has little effect on the economic
foundation of the social life,--than to completely revolutionize this
social life in its economic constitution.

The processes of social transformation, as well as--under various
names--those of every sort of transformation in living organisms are:
evolution,--revolution,--rebellion,--individual violence.

A mineral or vegetable or animal species may pass through, during the
cycle of its existence, these four processes.

As long as the structure and the volume of the centre of
crystallization, the germ, or the embryo, increase gradually, we have a
gradual and continuous process of _evolution_, which must be followed at
a definite stage by a process of _revolution_, more or less prolonged,
represented, for example, by the separation of the entire crystal from
the mineral mass which surrounds it, or by certain revolutionary phases
of vegetable or animal life, as, for example, the moment of sexual
reproduction; there may also be a period of _rebellion_, that is to say,
of organized personal violence, a frequent and well-verified phenomenon
among those species of animals who live in societies; there may also be
isolated instances of _personal violence_, as in the struggles to obtain
food or for possession of the females between animals of the same
species.

These same processes also occur in the human world. By _evolution_ must
be understood the transformation that takes place day by day, which is
almost unnoticed, but continuous and inevitable; by _revolution_, the
critical and decisive period, more or less prolonged, of an evolution
that has reached its concluding phase; by _rebellion_, the partially
collective violence which breaks out, upon the occasion of some
particular circumstance, at a definite place and time; and by
_individual violence_, the action of one individual against one or
several others, which may be the effect of a fanatical passion or of
criminal instincts, or the manifestation of a lack of mental
equilibrium,--and which identifies itself with the political or
religious ideas most in vogue at the moment.

It must be remarked, in the fi