the Renaissance of a new civilization.

This law, which dominates all the magnificent development of the social
life, equally governs the fate and the parabolic career of all social
institutions.

One phase of social evolution by following upon another phase
eliminates, it is true, the parts that are not vital, the pathological
products of preceding institutions, but it preserves and develops the
parts that are healthy and vigorous while ever elevating more and more
the physical and moral diapason of humanity.

By this natural process the great stream of humanity issued from the
virgin forests of savage life and developed with majestic grandeur
during the periods of barbarism and the present civilization, which are
superior in some respects to the preceding phases of the social life,
but in many others are marred by the very products of their own
degeneracy, as I pointed out in speaking of reactionary varieties of
social selection.

And, as an example of this, it is certain that the laborers of the
contemporaneous period, of the bourgeois civilization have, in general,
a better physical and moral life than those of past centuries, but it
cannot be denied none the less that their condition as free
_wage-workers_ is inferior in more than one particular to the condition
of the _slaves_ of antiquity and of the _serfs_ of the Middle Ages.

The _slave_ of antiquity was, it is true, the absolute property of his
master, of the _free_ man, and he was condemned to well nigh an animal
existence, but it was to the interest of his master to assure him daily
bread at the least, for the slave formed a part of his estate, like his
cattle and horses.

Just so, the serf or villein of the Middle Ages enjoyed certain
customary rights which attached him to the soil and assured him at the
least--save in case of famine--of daily bread.

The free wage-worker of the modern world, on the contrary, is always
condemned to labor inhuman both in its duration and its character, and
this is the justification of that demand for an Eight-Hours day which
can already count more than one victory and which is destined to a sure
triumph. As no permanent legal relation binds the wage-slave either to
the capitalist proprietor or to the soil, his daily bread is not assured
to him, because the proprietor no longer has any interest to feed and
support the laborers who toil in his factory or on his field. The death
or sickness of the laborer cannot, in fac