re in absolute contradiction with that very theory, and
that they are therefore, to say the least, utopian and absurd.

The first alleged contradiction between socialism and evolutionism is
that the return to collective ownership of the land would be, at the
same time, a return to the primitive, savage state of mankind, and
socialism would indeed be a transformation, but a transformation in a
backward direction, that is to say, against the current of the social
evolution which has led us from the primitive form of collective
property in land to the present form of individual property in land--the
form characteristic of advanced civilization. Socialism, then, would be
a return to barbarism.

This objection contains an element of truth which can not be denied; it
rightly points out that collective ownership should be a
return--apparent--to the primitive social organization. But the
conclusion drawn from this truth is absolutely false and anti-scientific
because it altogether neglects a law--which is usually forgotten--but
which is no less true, no less founded on scientific observation of the
facts than is the law of social evolution.

This is a sociological law which an able French physician merely pointed
out in his studies on the relations between Transmutation and
Socialism,[50] and the truth and full importance of which I showed in my
_Sociologie criminelle_ (1892)--before I became a militant
socialist--and which I again emphasized in my recent controversy with
Morselli on the subject of divorce.[51]

This law of apparent retrogression proves that the reversion of social
institutions to primitive forms and types is a fact of constant
recurrence.

Before referring to some obvious illustrations of this law, I would
recall to your notice the fact that M. Cognetti de Martiis, as far back
as 1881, had a vague perception of this sociological law. His work,
_Forme primitive nell' evoluzione economica_, (Turin, 1881), so
remarkable for the fullness, accuracy and reliability of its collation
of relevant facts, made it possible to foresee the possibility of the
reappearance in the future economic evolution of the primitive forms
characteristic of the status which formed the starting-point of the
social evolution.

I also remember having heard Carducci say, in his lectures at the
University of Bologna, that the later development of the forms and the
substance of literature is often merely the reproduction of the forms
a