133 



It is evident, in fact, that Europe and 

 America are at the end of the igth century in 

 a period of revolution prepared by the evolu- 

 tion formed by the bourgeois organisation 

 itself, and followed by Utopian as by scientific 

 socialism. And we are even in the period of 

 social life which Bagehot calls " the age of 

 discussion,"* and we already observe what 

 Zola has called in Germinal the creaking 

 of the politico-social floor all those symp- 

 toms which Taine has described in the 

 Ancien Regime in relating the history of the 

 twenty years which preceded 1 789. Repressive 

 measures not being able to serve any good 

 against the internal revolution that these 

 symptoms reveal, the only efficacious and 

 fruitful ones are laws of social reform 

 and prevention which, whilst making the 

 present safe, render less painful, as Marx said, 

 " the birth of the new society." 



In this sense evolution and revolution con- 

 stitute the most fruitful and sure of social 

 metamorphoses. Human society, forming a 

 natural and living organism, like all other 

 organisms, cannot undergo sudden tranforma- 

 tions as those imagine who think we must 

 resort only, or by preference, to revolt and 

 personal violence to realise a new social 

 organisation. It is to me as though one could 

 imagine that a child or a young man could 

 in a day accomplish a biological evolution 

 even in the revolutionary period of puberty 



^.Bagehot, Physics and Politics, 



