AFTERWORD 361 



the right to gratify every instinct? Social inequalities are 

 the product of laws and conventionalities willed by the rich 

 and powerful. In the natural and primitive state of things 

 they did not exist; why not proceed then to a general leveling 

 of the existing social order? 



"Such an origin of the human race being assumed, the 

 existence of the soul and a future life becomes a myth invented 

 by the priests of the various religions. With this inconvenient 

 restraint removed, there remains no alternative save to aspire 

 to the acquisition of all the pleasures of life; and for him 

 who lacks the wherewithal to procure them for himself there 

 remains no other recourse than to seek them by means of 

 violence or strategy. Hence anarchy. In this supposition, 

 morality no longer possesses that sole, true, and efficacious 

 sanction which religion alone can furnish; it amounts to 

 nothing more than the resultant of the evolution of the indi- 

 vidual's perfections and their coordination to the well-being 

 of his race and of society. But if, by reason of retarded evo- 

 lution, the social instincts have not progressed to the point of 

 repressing the individual or egoistic instincts, what guilt will 

 there be in the delinquent who lapses into the most atrocious 

 crimes? Hence free will is another myth that positive psy- 

 chology and the science of moral statistics have already been 

 at pains to explode. 



"And behold the suffering, the unfortunate, and the dying 

 deprived of their sole consolation, the last hope which faith 

 held out to them, and society reduced to an inferno of des- 

 peradoes and suicides! I could go on showing in this way, to 

 what a pass the evolutionistic theories bring society and the 

 individual." ("La teoria delP evoluzione e le sue applicazioni," 

 p. 46.) 



