n.--Revolution.--Rebellion.--Violence 129

III.

SOCIOLOGY AND SOCIALISM.

Sterility of sociology 156
Marx completes Darwin And Spencer. Conservatives and
socialists 159
Appendix I.--Reply to Spencer 173
Appendix II.--Socialist superstition and individualist myopia 177

Author's Preface.

(_For the French Edition._)

This volume--which it has been desired to make known to the great public
in the French language--in entering upon a question so complex and so
vast as socialism, has but a single and definite aim.

My intention has been to point out, and in nearly all cases by rapid and
concise observations, the general relations existing between
contemporary socialism and the whole trend of modern scientific thought.

The opponents of contemporary socialism see in it, or wish to see in it,
merely a reproduction of the sentimental socialism of the first half of
the Nineteenth Century. They contend that socialism is in conflict with
the fundamental facts and inductions of the physical, biological and
social sciences, whose marvelous development and fruitful applications
are the glory of our dying century.

To oppose socialism, recourse has been had to the individual
interpretations and exaggerations of such or such a partisan of
Darwinism, or to the opinions of such or such a sociologist--opinions
and interpretations in obvious conflict with the premises of their
theories on universal and inevitable evolution.

It has also been said--under the pressure of acute or chronic
hunger--that "if science was against socialism, so much the worse for
science." And those who thus spoke were right if they meant by
"science"--even with a capital S--the whole mass of observations and
conclusions _ad usum delphini_ that orthodox science, academic and
official--often in good faith, but sometimes also through interested
motives--has always placed at the disposal of the ruling minorities.

I have believed it possible to show that modern experiential science is
in complete harmony with contemporary socialism, which, since the work
of Marx and Engels and their successors, differs essentially from
sentimental socialism, both in its scientific system and in its
political tactics, though it continues to put forth generous efforts for
the attainment of the same goal: social justice for