20 



We must not believe that socialism will 

 realise every possible ideal of humanity, and 

 that after it there will be nothing to desire 

 and conquer ! Our descendants would be 

 condemned to idleness and vagrancy if we 

 had the capacity to exhaust every possible 

 human ideal. 



The individual or society which has no 

 longer any ideal to pursue is dead or about 

 to die. The formula of communism could 

 then be a further ideal when collectivism has 

 been completely realised by the historical 

 process with which I shall deal further on. 



We are now able to conclude that there is 

 no contradiction between socialism and 

 Darwinism on the subject of equality among 

 all men. Socialism has never affirmed it, and 

 it aims, in agreement with Darwinism, to pro- 

 mote a better life for individuals and for 

 society. 



This permits us also to answer the objection 

 too often repeated, that socialism stifles and 

 suppresses human personality under the leaden 

 mantle of collectivism by reducing individuals 

 to a monastic function, by making of them 

 so many human bees in the social hive. 



It is exactly the contrary that is true. 

 Is it not evident that it is in the present 



by a simple internal impulse of right this is the distant 

 ideal of Herbert Spencer would only be realised after a 

 phase of collectivism in which individual activity, and 

 instincts could discipline themselves into social solidarity 

 whilst escaping from the essentially anarchic individualism 

 of our time, in which every man, if he is sufficiently 

 clever to 'skirt the penal code,' may do what he pleases 

 without troubling himself about his fellow-men. 



