s necessary, useful and meritorious as that of
the workman who builds a locomotive, of the mechanical engineer who
improves it or of the savant who strives to extend the bounds of human
knowledge in his study or laboratory.

The one essential thing is that all the members of society work, just as
in the individual organism all the cells perform their different
functions, more or less modest in appearance--for example, the
nerve-cells, the bone-cells or the muscular cells--but all biological
functions, or sorts of labor, equally useful and necessary to the life
of the organism as a whole.

In the biological organism no living cell remains inactive, and the cell
obtains nourishment by material exchanges only in proportion to its
labor; in the social organism no individual ought to live without
working, whatever form his labor may take.

In this way the majority of the artificial difficulties that our
opponents raise against socialism may be swept aside.

"Who, then, will black the boots under the socialist regime?" demands M.
Richter in his book so poor in ideas, but which becomes positively
grotesque when it assumes that, in the name of social equality the
"grand chancellor" of the socialist society will be obliged, before
attending to the public business, to black his own boots and mind his
own clothes! In truth, if the adversaries of socialism had nothing but
arguments of this sort, discussion would indeed be needless.

But all will want to do the least fatiguing and most agreeable kinds of
work, says some one with a greater show of seriousness.

I will answer that this is equivalent to demanding to-day the
promulgation of a decree as follows: Henceforth all men shall be born
painters or surgeons!

The distribution to the proper persons of the different kinds of mental
and manual labor will be effected in fact by the anthropological
variations in temperament and character, and there will be no need to
resort to monkish regulations (another baseless objection to socialism).

Propose to a peasant of average intelligence to devote himself to the
study of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whose
brain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth,
instead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer the
labor for which they feel themselves best fitted.

The changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable as
many imagine when society shall be organized unde