ss"?

This is, in fact, a natural psychological tendency, a tendency analogous
to _fetishism_, to refuse to consider the ideal attained, the progress
effected as a simple instrument, a starting-point for further progress
and for the attainment of new ideals, instead of contentedly halting to
adore as a fetish the progress already effected, which men are prone to
look upon as being so complete that it leaves no room for new ideals and
higher aspirations.

Just as the savage adores the fruit-tree, whose benefits he enjoys, for
itself and not for the fruits it can yield, and, in the end, makes a
fetish of it, an idol too holy to be touched and, therefore, barren;
just as the miser who has learned in our individualist world the value
of money, ends by adoring the money in itself and for itself, as a
fetish and an idol, and keeps it buried in a safe where it remains
sterile, instead of employing it as a means for procuring himself new
pleasures; in the same way, the sincere liberal, the son of the French
Revolution, has made Liberty an idol which is its own goal, a sterile
fetish, instead of making use of it as an instrument for new conquests,
for the realization of new ideals.

It is understood that under a regime of political tyranny, the first and
most urgent ideal was necessarily the conquest of liberty and of
political sovereignty.

And we who arrive upon the field after the battle is fought and the
victory won, we gladly pay our tribute of gratitude for that conquest to
all the martyrs and heroes who bought it at the price of their blood.

But Liberty is not and can not be its own end and object!

What is the liberty of holding public assemblages or the liberty of
thought worth if the stomach has not its daily bread, and if millions of
individuals have their moral strength paralyzed as a consequence of
bodily or cerebral anemia?

Of what worth is the theoretic share in political sovereignty, the right
to vote, if the people remain enslaved by misery, lack of employment,
and acute or chronic hunger?

Liberty for liberty's sake--there you have the progress achieved turned
into an obstacle to future progress; it is a sort of political
masturbation, it is impotency face to face with the new necessities of
life.

Socialism, on the other hand, says that just as the subsequent phase of
the social evolution does not efface the conquests of the preceding
phases, neither does it wish to suppress the liberty so gloriou