ovement of the social environment,
which socialism asserts, is a thesis that can be discussed; but when a
writer, in order to deny this possibility, opposes to the future the
effects of a present, whose elimination is the precise question at
issue, he falls into that insidious fallacy which it is only necessary
to point out to remove all foundation from his arguments.

* * * * *

And it is as always by grace of this same fallacy that he is able to
declare, on page 213, that under the socialist regime "the fine arts
will be unable to exist. It is easy to say, they will henceforth be
exercised and cultivated for the benefit of the public. Of what public?
Of the great mass of the people _deprived of artistic education_?" As
if, when poverty is once eliminated and labor has become less exhausting
for the popular classes, the comfort and economic security, which would
result from this, would not be sure to develop in them also the taste
for aesthetic pleasure, which they feel and satisfy now, so far as that
is possible for them, in the various forms of popular art, or as may be
seen to-day it Paris and Vienna by the "_Theatre socialiste_" and at
Brussells by the free musical matinees, instituted by the socialists and
frequented by a constantly growing number of workingmen. It is just the
same with regard to scientific instruction, as witness "University
Extension" in England and Belgium. And all this, notwithstanding the
present total lack of artistic education, but thanks to the exigence
among the workers of these countries of an economic condition lees
wretched than that of the agricultural or even the industrial
proletariat in countries such as Italy.

And from another point of view, what are the museums if not a form of
collective ownership and use of the products of art?

It is again, as always, the same fallacy which (at page 216) makes M.
Garofalo write: "The history of Europe, from the fifth to the thirteenth
centuries, shows us, _by analogy_, what would happen to the world if the
lower classes should come into power.... How to explain the medieval
barbarism and anarchy save by the grossness and ignorance of the
conquerors? _The same fate_ would inevitably await the modern
civilization, if the controlling power should fall into the hands of the
proletarians, who, assuredly, _are intellectually not superior to the
ancient barbarians_ and MORALLY ARE FAR INFERIOR TO THEM!"

Let us di