es less modern than many conservatives.

There will be a new birth of political life only with the development of
the socialist party, because, after the disappearance from the political
stage of the historical figures of the patriots (the founders of modern
Italy) and of the personal reasons which split up the representatives
into different political groups, the formation of one single
individualist party will become necessary, as I declared in the Italian
Chamber on the 20th of December, 1893.

The historical duel will then be begun, and the Class Struggle will then
display on the field of politics all its beneficent influence.
Beneficent, I say, because the class struggle must be understood not in
the contemptible sense of a Saturnalia of fist-fights and outrages, of
malevolence and personal violence, but must be worthily conceived as a
great social drama. With all my heart I hope that this conflict may be
settled, for the progress of civilization, without bloody convulsions,
but historical destiny has decreed the conflict, and it is not given to
us or to others to avert or postpone it.

It follows from all that we have just said that these ideas of political
socialism, because they are scientific, dispose their partisans both to
_personal tolerance_ and to _theoretical inflexibility_.[83] This is
also a conclusion reached by experimental psychology in the domain of
philosophy. However great our personal sympathies may be for such or
such a representative of the radical faction of the individualist party
(as well as for every honorable and sincere representative of any
scientific, religious or political opinion whatsoever), we are bound to
recognize that there are on the side of socialism no _partiti
affini_.[84] It is necessary to be on one side or the
other--individualist or socialist. There is no middle ground. And I am
constantly growing more and more convinced that the only serviceable
tactics for the formation of a socialist party likely to live, is
precisely that policy of theoretical inflexibility and of refusing to
enter into any "alliance" with _partiti affini_, as such an alliance is
for socialism only a "false placenta" for a fetus that is unlikely to
live.

The conservative and the socialist are the natural products of the
individual character and the social environment. One is born a
conservative or an innovator just as one is born a painter or a surgeon.
Therefore the socialists have no contempt fo