119 



organisation. Similarly the nervous system 

 of a mammal is the regulating apparatus of 

 its organism ; it is certainly more complex 

 than that of the organism of a fish or a 

 mollusc, but it has not because of that, 

 tyrannically stifled the autonomy of the other 

 organs and apparatus, or of the cells in their 

 living confederation. 



It is then understood, that in order to refute 

 socialism, the current objections must not be 

 repeated against an artificial and sentimental 

 system which, I agree, may very well still 

 continue to exist in the nebulous mass of 

 popular ideas. But every day it loses ground 

 with the intelligent partisans proletarian, 

 bourgeois or aristocratic of scientific social- 

 ism, who armed, thanks to the impulse of 

 the genius of Marx, with all the most positive 

 of the inductions of modern science, triumphs 

 over the old objections which our opponents 

 still repeat from mental habit but which have 

 been left behind by contemporary knowledge 

 at the same time as Utopian socialism which 

 called them forth. 



We must make the same answer to the 

 second part of the objection relating to the 

 mode in which the future of socialism will be 

 realised. 



It is an inevitable and logical consequence 

 of Utopian and artificial socialism to think 

 that the constructive policy proposed by one 

 reformer or another ought, or can, be put in 

 practice on this day or the next by a decree. 



In this sense it is quite true that the Utopian 

 illusion of empirical socialism is in opposition 



