t a
virtue, as those who employ labour say, to glorify it.

Gabriel loudly affirmed the necessity of work in the future. The
man of the future would work without being forced to do so by his
necessities; he would not be ruled by the body and its imperious
requirements; his conscience would be inspired with the clear
understanding of solidarity with his fellows and the certainty that
if one abandoned social duties others would follow the example, thus
rendering life in common impossible and so returning to the actual
times of poverty and robbery.

"Why do not the few men of culture and sound conscience living at
present kill and rob?" exclaimed Gabriel. "It is not through fear of
the law and its representatives, for a clear intelligence, if it takes
the trouble, can easily find ways of evading both; neither can it be
through fear of eternal penalties and divine punishment, as such
men do not believe in these inventions of the past. It is from that
respect to his fellows which is felt by every elevated mind, from the
consideration that all violence should be avoided, for if everyone
gave themselves over to it, all social life must disappear. When this
understanding, which now only belongs to a few, embraces all humanity,
men will live ruled by their own consciences without laws or police,
working from social duty, without requiring man to be the only spring
of activity, and sweating without compassion to be the only way to
ease."

Throughout all his revolutionary raptures Luna had no illusions as to
the present. Humanity was at present an infected land, in which the
best seeds rotted, or which at best produced only poisonous fruits; we
must wait till the equalising revolution begun in the human conscience
a century ago should be completed, after that it would be possible
and easy to change the basis of society; he had a blind faith in
the future. Man must progress in the same way as communities; these
reckoned their evolutions by centuries, but man by millions of
years. How could a man of to-day be compared to the biped animal of
prehistoric times, though bearing visibly the traces of the animalism
from which he had lately emerged? Living in fellowship with his
ancestors the monkeys, the principal difference being the first
babblings of speech, and the first trembling spark that began to burn
in his brain.

From the ravenous beast of former days, suffering from all the cruel
forces of nature and living in fraternal