s laboratories, and its annual conversaziones to each of its
members, whether he be a Darwin, or a simple amateur.

At St. Petersburg, if you are elaborating an invention, you go into a
special laboratory, where you are given a place, a carpenter's bench, a
turning lathe, all the necessary tools and scientific instruments,
provided only you know how to use them; and you are allowed to work
there as long as you please. There are the tools; interest others in
your idea; join with fellow workers skilled in various crafts, or work
alone if you prefer it. Invent a flying machine, or invent nothing--that
is your own affair. You are pursuing an idea--that is enough.

In the same way, those who man the lifeboat do not ask credentials from
the crew of a sinking ship; they launch their boat, risk their lives in
the raging waves, and sometimes perish, all to save men whom they do not
even know. And what need to know them? "They are human beings, and they
need our aid--that is enough, that establishes their right---- To the
rescue!"

Thus we find a tendency, eminently communistic, springing up on all
sides, and in various guises, in the very heart of theoretically
individualist societies.

Suppose that one of our great cities, so egotistic in ordinary times,
were visited to-morrow by some calamity--a siege, for instance--that
same selfish city would decide that the first needs to satisfy were
those of the children and the aged. Without asking what services they
had rendered, or were likely to render to society, it would first of all
feed them. Then the combatants would be cared for, irrespective of the
courage or the intelligence which each had displayed, and thousands of
men and women would outvie each other in unselfish devotion to the
wounded.

This tendency exists, and is felt as soon as the most pressing needs of
each are satisfied, and in proportion as the productive power of the
race increases. It becomes an active force every time a great idea comes
to oust the mean preoccupations of everyday life.

How can we doubt, then, that when the instruments of production are
placed at the service of all, when business is conducted on Communist
principles, when labour, having recovered its place of honour in
society, produces much more than is necessary to all--how can we doubt
that this force (already so powerful), will enlarge its sphere of action
till it becomes the ruling principle of social life?

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