hich the plan of destroying civilization is
ostensibly founded.

It will be remembered that Rousseau like Weishaupt held that the Golden
Age of felicity did not end in the garden of Eden, as is popularly
supposed, but was prolonged into tribal and nomadic life. Up to this
moment Communism was the happy disposition under which the human race
existed and which vanished with the introduction of civilization.
Civilization is therefore the _fons et origo mali_ and should be done
away with. Let no one exclaim that this theory died out either with
Rousseau or with Weishaupt; the idea that "civilization is all wrong"
runs all through the writings and speeches of our Intellectual
Socialists to-day. I have referred elsewhere to Mr. H.G. Wells's
prediction that mankind will more and more revert to the nomadic life,
and Mr. Snowden has recently referred in tones of evident nostalgia to
that productive era when man "lived under a system of tribal
Communism."[739] The children who attend the Socialist Schools are also
taught in the "Red Catechism" the advantages of savagery, thus:

Question. Do savages starve in the midst of plenty?

Answer. No; when there is plenty of food they all rejoice, feast, and
make merry.[740]

That when there is not plenty of food they occasionally eat each other
is not mentioned.

Here, then, is the theory on which this yearning for a return to nature
is based. For it is quite probable that if a Golden Age ever existed it
was Communistic; it is also true that certain primitive tribes have
found it possible to continue the same system, for the simple reason
that when and where the earth was very thinly populated it brought
forth, without the artificial aid of agriculture, more than enough to
supply each man's needs. There was therefore no need for laws to protect
property, since every man could help himself freely to all that he
required. If at the present time a dozen people were shipwrecked on a
fertile island some miles in area, the institution of property would be
equally superfluous; if, however, several hundred were to share the same
fate, it would at once become necessary to institute some system of
cultivation which in its turn would necessitate either the institution
of property, by which each man would depend on his own plot of land for
his existence, or a communal system, by which all would be obliged to
work for the common good and force applied to those who refused to do
their allotted sh