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this sociological law of apparent retrogression , 

 the natural causes of which M. Loria has 

 admirably analysed : Primitive humanity 

 borrows from surrounding nature the funda- 

 mental and most simple lines of its thought 

 and life ; then the progress of intelligence and 

 complexity, increasing by a law of evolution, 

 gives us an analytical development of the 

 principal elements contained in the first germs 

 of each institution ; this analytical develop- 

 ment is often, once it is finished, antagonistic 

 to each of the elements ; humanity itself, 

 having reached a certain stage of evolution, 

 recomposes in a final synthesis these different 



forms a strange contrast to the marvellous wealth of posi- 

 tive ideas in his first works) is founded on two arguments, 

 (i) the present landowners are not the direct descendants 

 of the first conquerors : they have acquired their properties 

 generally by free contract ; (2) Society would have a right 

 to the ownership of the virgin soil, as it was before the 

 clearing, the improvements, the buildings made by private 

 owners : the indemnity which ought to be paid for these 

 improvements would mount to an enormous figure. 



We must answer that the first argument would hold good 

 if socialism proposed to punish the present landowners, 

 but the question is put otherwise : society recognises the 

 dispossession of holders of land as of "public benefit," 

 the individual right must bow to the social right, as 

 happens, moreover, at present, whilst reserving the ques- 

 tion of indemnity. In order to answer the second question 

 we must not forget that the improvements are not the 

 exclusive work of the personal activity of the landowners. 

 There is first the enormous accumulation of labour and 

 blood which numerous generations of workers, for the 

 benefit of others, have left on the soil to put it in its 

 present state of culture ; there is also this fact that society 

 itself, social life, has been a large co-efficient of these 

 improvements since the good state of the public roads, 

 railways, the use of machines in agriculture, etc., have 

 procured for landowners important increments, free of 

 cost to them, in the value of their lands. 



Why then, iLwe consider the amount and the form of 



the indemnity, should this indemnity be total and absolute ? 



But even to-day if a landowner in consequence of diverse 



