the ancient regime, forgetting, however, the deer park; 

 and who without adducing any original observation limits 

 himself to a repetition of the most superficial declama- 

 tions of M. Guyot, or some other journalist, and that in 

 a language violent and sometimes puerile. He who was 

 before distinguished for the tone of his publications, 

 which were always calm and sedate, makes us now think 

 that, less convinced of being right than he would have 

 us believe, he clamours and makes a great noise. 



For example, on page 17, in a style which is neither 

 aristocratic nor bourgeois, he writes that "M. Bebel had 

 the effrontery to make in the open Reichstag an apology 

 for the Commune," and he forgets that the Commune of 

 Paris must not be judged historically only according to 

 the contradictory impressions left by the artificial and 

 exaggerated narrations of the bourgeois press of that 

 time. Malon and Marx have shown from documents 

 whose statements cannot be disputed, and on unassail- 

 able historical grounds, what is the impartial judgment 

 which ought to be passed on the Commune in spite of 

 the excesses which as M. Alfred Maury said to me at 

 Pere-Lachaise one day in 1879 were far surpassed by 

 the ferocity of a savage repression. 



In the same way on pages 20 and 22, he speaks, I do 

 not know why, of the "scorn" of the Marxian socialists 

 for sentimental socialism, which no one has ever thought 

 of scorning, although we recognise that it is very little 

 in agreement with the positive discipline of social science. 



And on page 154 he thinks he is carrying on a scientific 

 discussion by writing : "Truly, when we see that 'men 

 professing such doctrines find a means of making them- 

 selves heard, we are obliged to recognise that there is no 

 limit to human imbecility." 



Ah ! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language 

 reminds me of that of certain classical criminologists 

 do you remember it? who though they could fight the 

 positivist school with a language too like this, which con- 

 ceals under the banal phrase the absolute want of ideas 

 with which to oppose the detested, but victorious heresy. 



With regard to my statement that the whole of contem- 

 porary science is dominated by the idea and the fact of 

 the social aggregate and therefore of socialism against 

 the glorification which the i8th century made of the 

 individual, and, therefore, of individualism, M. Garofalo 

 answers me that "the story of Robinson Crusoe has been 

 borrowed from a very true history," adding that "one 

 could cite many cases of anchorites and hermits who had 

 no need of the company of their fellow-creatures" (p. 82). 



He thinks he has thus shown that I was mistaken 

 when I affirmed that the species is the only eternal reality 



