or a mammal in an atmosphere deprived of 

 oxygen. 



They are the same considerations that 

 condemn to a certain death all those famous 

 experiments of socialist, communist or 

 anarchist communities which people have 

 attempted to establish in different places as 

 " experiments in socialism." People do not 

 seem to have understood that such experiments 

 must inevitably fail, obliged as they are 

 to develop themselves in an individualist 

 economic and moral environment which 

 cannot supply them with the conditions of 

 physiological development to be found, on 

 the contrary, when the whole social organisa- 

 tion has been collectively arranged, that is to 

 say when society is socialised. * 



At this moment the psychological indi- 

 vidual tendencies and aptitudes will adapt 

 themselves to their environment. It is natural 

 that in an individualist environment of free 

 competition in which each individual sees in 

 the other, if not an enemy, at least a com- 

 petitor, anti -social egoism must be the 

 tendency which inevitably develops most, by 

 necessity of the instinct of personal preser- 

 vation, especially in the last phases of a 

 civilisation which seems driven with full 

 steam if it is compared with the pacific and 

 slow individualism of past centuries. 



* One can thus understand how unsubstantial is the 

 current reasoning of the opponents of socialism which 

 M. Mas6-Dari has gone over in // socialismo, Turin, 

 1890, 9 : the failure of communistic or socialistic com- 

 munities is a proof from actual fact of " the instability 

 of a socialist arrangement." 



