16; 



Now, first of all, there would be nothing contradictory 

 if, after having partially accepted socialism, which I did 

 already in 1883, the progressive evolution of my mind, 

 after having studied the scientific systematizing of Marx 

 and his collaborators, had led me to recognise (without 

 any personal advantage) the whole truth of socialism. 

 But, above all, precisely because scientific socialism 

 (since Marx, Engels, Melon, de Paepe, Dramard, 

 Lanessan, Guesde, Shaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, 

 Colajanni, Turati, De Greef, Lafargue, Jaures, Renard, 

 Denis, Pleckanov, Vandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, 

 Labriola, Kautsky, etc.) is different from sentimental 

 socialism which I alone had in view in 1883, it is for this 

 very reason that I still maintain to-day these two prin- 

 cipal arguments, and I thus find myself in complete 

 agreement with international scientific socialism. 



Marxism, in fact, recognises that it is only by evolu- 

 tion gradual, but day by day more accelerated and 

 fuller that the substitution of the socialist regime for 

 the individualist rdgime can be realised ; because the 

 social revolution, in the sense which I shall presently 

 name, will only be possible after the moral revolution 

 has been realised among the proletarians of the civilised 

 world, from the natural result of their actual and 

 common economic conditions. 



And as for the absolute disappearance of all crimin- 

 ality I maintain still my argument of 1883. In Socialisme 

 et science positive ( 3) I have written that in a socialist 

 regime there will be although in infinitely less proper-' 

 tions some conquered in the struggle for existence, and 

 that if the chronic and epidemic forms of nervous affec- 

 tion, of crime, of madness, of suicide, are destined to 

 disappear, the acute and sporadic forms will not com- 

 pletely disappear. 



It is then natural that in a socialist regime, with the 

 disappearance of misery, the principal source of popular 

 degeneracy is exhausted in epidemic and chronic forms 

 of illness, crimeSj madness, suicide ; that is indeed what 

 one sees now in less proportions but with a positive 

 confirmation of the general induction since illnesses, 

 crimes, madness, suicide increase during times of scarcity 

 and crises, whilst they lessen in the years of less miser- 

 able economic conditions. 



That is not saying enough ; even in the bourgeoisie 

 and aristocracy, who only see every day that the feverish 

 competition and the spasmodic struggle for the conquest 

 and preservation of their inheritance condemn to the 

 nervous diseases, to crime, to suicide, a suffering crowd 

 of men of no defined position, of knights or marquises 

 who in a collectivist re'gime once having eliminated the 



