"5 



formation, general lines of which are already 

 drawn and which is not an artificial con- 

 struction imagined by some utopist or 

 metaphysician. 



The position is the same both for social 

 sciences and natural sciences. 



In studying a human embryo of a few days, 

 or a few weeks, the biologist cannot say (it is 

 the celebrated law of Haeckel : the develop- 

 ment of the individual embryo reproduces in 

 miniature the ^diverse forms of development 

 of the animal species which have preceded it 

 in the zoological series) the biologist cannot 

 say if it will be male or female, and still less 

 if it will be a strong or feeble individual, 

 of a sanguine or nervous temperament, 

 intelligent or not. 



He will only be able to give the general 

 lines of the future evolution of this individual, 

 and will leave to time the care of specifying 

 naturally and spontaneously, and according 

 to its organic, hereditary conditions and the 

 conditions of the environment in which it will 

 live, all the peculiarities of its personality. 



This is what every socialist can and should 

 answer. It is the position taken by Bebel 

 in the German Reichstag,* in his answer to 

 those who wish to know now in detail what 

 the future State will be, and who, cleverly 

 profiting by the ingenuity of socialist romance 

 writers, criticise their artificial phantasies, 

 true in their general lines, but arbitrary in 

 their details. 



* Bebel, Zukunftstaat und Sozialdemokratie, 1893. 



