86 



There is a sociological law which a French 

 doctor of repute has indicated in studying 

 the relations of transformism and socialism.* 

 I have shown the truth and the importance of 

 this in my Criminal Sociology before becom- 

 ing a militant socialist and I have again 

 recently insisted upon it in my controversy 

 with M. Morselli on divorce.| 



This law of apparent retrogression shows 

 that the reversion of social institutions to 

 primitive forms and characteristics is a con- 

 stant fact. 



Before setting forth some evident illustra- 

 tions of this law, I will recall the fact that M. 

 Cognetti de Martiis, already in 1881, had had 

 a vague glimpse of this sociological law. His 

 work Forme primitive nelV evoluzione economica 

 (Turin 1881) so remarkable for the abund- 

 ance, the precision and the exactness of the 

 facts set forth, gave a glimpse in fact of the 

 possibility of the reappearance in the future 

 economic evolutions of the primitive forms 

 which marked its starting point. 



I remember also often to have heard 

 Carducci, in his lessons at the University of 

 Bologna, affirm that ultimate progress of the 

 forms and subject matter of literature is often 

 only the reproduction of the forms and the 

 subject-matter of primitive Graeco-Oriental 

 literature ; similarly the modern scientific 

 theory of monism, the very soul of universal 

 evolution and the representative of the latest 



* L. Dramard, Transformisme et socialisme, in the 

 Revue socialiste, January and February, 1885. 



t Divorzio e sociologia in the Scuola positiva nella 

 giurisprudenza penale, Rome, 1893, No. 16. 



