In the matter of social artificial construc- 

 tions socialists may say to Individualists : let 

 him who is without sin cast the first stone. 



The true answer is quite another. Scientific 

 socialism represents a much more advanced 

 phase of socialist ideas : it is in complete 

 accord with positive modern science, and it 

 has completely abandoned the fantastic ideas 

 of prophesying from the present time what 

 human society will be in the new collectivist 

 organisation. 



What scientific socialism can affirm, and 

 what it does affirm, with mathematical cer- 

 tainty, is that the current, the trajectory, of 

 human evolution is in a general sense indi- 

 cated and foreseen by socialism, that is to 

 say, in the sense of a continuous, progressive 

 preponderance of the interests and benefit of 

 the species over those of the individual and 

 consequently in the sense of a continuous 

 socialisation of economic life and through it 

 of juridical, moral, and political life. 



As to the small details of the new social 

 edifice, we cannot foresee them precisely, be- 

 cause the new social edifice will be, and is, 

 a natural and spontaneous product of human 

 evolution which is already in the process of 



borrowed from the countries of the North the system of 

 solitary confinement when already these countries have 

 been able to recognise all the costly absurdity of, a plan 

 made to brutalise people. 



Experience has unfortunately confirmed my previsions, 

 as the Commission of Judicial Statistics was obliged to 

 acknowledge. 



Ferri, La Bancarotta del nuovo codice penale in Scuola 

 positiva, No. 9, 1894. 



