vili PREFACE 



be interpreted as want of respect, I accept the 

 proffered honour, explaining, without dogmatising 

 or arrieres pensees, my individual impressions on 

 the doctrine elaborated by Dr Lluria, and the 

 solutions, still very remote, of the terrible social 

 problem. 



I am entirely in accord with the critical part of 

 this book. The author has abundance of reasons 

 for declaring that present humanity has contemptu- 

 ously severed herself from Nature, occasioning this 

 systematic and perpetual violation of the laws of 

 evolution by initiating inequalities and torturing 

 pain and misery. 



The social man of to-day, corrupted by his un- 

 healthy worship of capital, represents a strange 

 mixture of civilisation and barbarism. He thinks 

 and feels, apparently, like a Christian, but he acts 

 like a citizen of the aristocracy of the ancient in- 

 human republics. The sphere of his intelligence 

 has enlarged as much as that of his will has 

 decreased. 



More attached every day to a sense of justice, 

 present society presents the sad and paradoxical 

 spectacle of a world upside down; above, sit 

 enthroned and honoured vice and laziness ; below, 

 struggling with hunger and pain, the toilers and 

 helpers the brains, that is, that, as Spencer 

 would say, sharpened by necessity, sovereign 



