rst place, that while revolution and
evolution are normal functions of social physiology, rebellion and
individual violence are symptoms of social pathology.

These are, nevertheless, merely natural and spontaneous processes,
since, as Virchow has shown, pathology is merely the sequel of normal
physiology. Besides, the pathological symptoms have, or should have, a
great diagnostical value for the classes in power; but the latter,
unfortunately, in every period of history, in times of political crisis,
as in those of social crisis, have shown themselves unable to conceive
of any other remedy than brutal repression--the guillotine or the
prison--and they fancy that thus they can cure the organic and
constitutional disease which vexes the social body.[67]

But it is indisputable, at all events, that the normal processes of
social transformation (and because they are normal, the most fruitful
and the surest, although the slowest and the least effective in
appearance) are evolution and revolution, using the latter term in its
accurate and scientific sense, as the concluding phase of an evolution,
and not in the current and incorrect sense of a stormy and violent
revolt.[68]

It is evident, in fact, that Europe and America are, in these closing
years of the nineteenth century, in a period of revolution, prepared by
the evolution begotten by the bourgeois organization itself and promoted
by utopian socialism as well as by scientific socialism. Likewise, we
are in that period of social life which Bagehot calls "the age of
discussion,"[69] and already we can see what Zola has called, in
_Germinal_, the cracking of the politico-social crust, and, in fact, all
those symptoms which Taine has described in his _l'Ancien Regime_, in
relating the history of the twenty years which preceded 1789. As
repressive methods are of no avail against domestic revolution, and only
serve to expose the symptoms, there can be nothing efficacious and
productive of good results, except laws of social reform and preparation
which, while safe-guarding the present society, will render less
painful, as Marx said, "the birth of the new society."

In this sense, evolution and revolution constitute the most fruitful and
surest processes of social metamorphosis. As human society forms a
natural and living organism, like all other organisms, it can not
endure sudden transformations, as those imagine who think that recourse
must be had only or by preference