122 



revolt and individual violence arise from 

 social pathology. 



These are, however, only natural and spon- 

 taneous processes, because, as Virchow has 

 shown, pathology is but the consequence of 

 physiology. Besides, pathological symptoms 

 have, or ought to have, a great diagnostic 

 value for the classes in power ; but the latter 

 unfortunately at each historical epoch, in the 

 moments of a political crisis as in those of a 

 social crisis, do not know how to invent any 

 other remedy than brutal repression, the guil- 

 lotine or the prison, and imagine themselves to 

 be able thus to cure the organic and constitu- 

 tional malady that troubles the social body.* 



But it is incontestable in all cases that the 

 normal processes of social transformation and, 

 in consequence, the most fruitful and the most 

 sure, even if the slowest and least efficacious 

 in appearance, are evolution and revolution, 

 taking the latter in its exact and positive 

 sense, as the last phase of an evolution, and 

 not in the current and inexact sense of 

 tumultuous and violent revolt, f 



* At the moment when I was correcting the proofs of 

 the Italian edition of this work, M. Crispi had just pro- 

 posed "some exceptional laws for the public security" 

 by which, seizing as a pretext some anarchist outrages, 

 he wished to strike at, and suppress, socialism. 



Repressive laws can suppress men but not an idea. Has 

 the failure of the exceptional laws passed in Germany 

 against the socialist party been forgotten? 



The number of crimes may be increased, public liberty 

 may be suppressed but that is no remedy. Socialism 

 will none the less continue its march. 



t Lombroso and Laschi, Le Crime politique, etc., and 

 the monograph of Elise*e Reclus, Evolution et Revolution. 



