fundamental needs, and the two poles of 

 life and its means are almost solely muscular 

 force. In a subsequent phase is added the 

 struggle for political supremacy (in the class, 

 in the tribe, in the village, in the town, in the 

 state), and, more and more, muscular force is 

 replaced by intellectual force. 



In the historic period Grseco-Latin society 

 struggles for civil equality (abolition of 

 slavery) ; it triumphs, but does not stop 

 because life is a struggle ; the society of the 

 middle ages struggles for religious equality, 

 gains it, but does not stop ; and at the end 

 of the 1 8th century it struggles for political 

 equality. Should it now stop and rest 

 in its present state ? To-day society- 

 struggles for economic equality, not for 

 an absolutely material equality, but for 

 this more positive equality of which I have 

 spoken. And everything makes us foresee with 

 mathematical certainty that this victory will 

 be gained to give place to new struggles for 

 new ideals among our descendants. 



reason, by conservatives more or less progressive ; but 

 already (1883) I was at the bottom a socialist, and I shall 

 prove it in the second edition of Socialismo e criminalitd.. 



My conviction became more complete and deeper, gradu- 

 ally and almost in spite of myself, by reading the popular 

 exposition of scientific socialism, which M. Turati wrote 

 in the Critica sociale, and M. Prampolini in the Giustizia; 

 I was at length definitely admitted to socialism through 

 the study of the works of Karl Marx, whose uncom- 

 promising dogmatism is clothed in a form a little dry and 

 hard, but whose general writings are irresistible, because 

 they are in complete harmony with the whole trend of 

 modern scientific thought. 



The works of M. Loria, quite full of Marxian theories 

 which a marvellous stream of scientific learning fertilises, 



