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to the positive law of evolution, and as such I 

 have attacked it in my work, Socialismo e 

 Criminalita, because at that time (1883) the 

 ideas of scientific socialism, or Marxian 

 socialism had not yet spread in Italy. 



A political party and a scientific theory are 

 natural products which must pass through the 

 vital phases of infancy and youth before 

 attaining complete development. It was then 

 inevitable that before being scientific or posi- 

 tive, socialism in Italy, as in other countries, 

 passed through the infantile phases of class 

 exclusiveness (of manual workers alone), and of 

 the nebulous romanticism which, giving to the 

 word revolution a restricted and incomplete 

 meaning, has always flattered itself with this 

 illusion, that a social organism can be radi- 

 cally changed from orie day to the next with 

 four shots from a gun as a monarchial regime 

 can be changed into a republican regime. 



But it is. infinitely easier to change the 

 political circumstances of a social organisa- 

 tion because these have a minor influence on 

 the economic basis of social life than to give 

 a new direction to this social life in its 

 economic constitution. 



The processes of social transformation, as 

 well as under different names those of every 

 transformation in living beings, are : evolution 

 revolution revolt individual violence. 



A mineral or vegetable or animal species 

 can undergo in the cycle of its existence these 

 four processes. 



As long as the structure and the volume of 

 the centre of crystallisation, the germ the 



