alism, found in the work of Marx and of those 

 who developed and completed it, its scientific 

 and social guide. In that lies the explanation 

 of each of its conquests. 



Civilisation is the most fruitful and beauti- 

 ful development of human energies, but it also 

 contains an infectious virus of enormous 

 power. By the side of the splendour of 

 artistic, scientific and industrial work, it 

 accumulates cankered products, idleness, 

 misery, folly, r crime, physical and moral 

 suicide that is to say, slavery. 



Pessimism this mournful symptom of a life 

 without an ideal, and, in part, the effect of 

 the exhaustion, or even of the degeneracy of 

 the nervous system extols final annihilation 

 in order to conquer pain. 



We, on the contrary, have faith in the 

 eternal " healing power of Nature," and 

 socialism is exactly that breath of a new and 

 better life which will deliver humanity 

 possibly after some access of fever from the 

 noxious products of the present phase of 

 civilisation, and which in a future phase will 

 give a new expansion to the healthy and 

 fruitful energies of all human beings. 



ENRICO FERRI. 

 Rome, June, 1894. 



