sregard this unjustified and unjustifiable insult and this
completely erroneous historical comparison. It is enough to point out
that it is here supposed that by a stroke of a magic wand "the lower
classes" will be able in a single day to gain possession of power
without having been prepared for this by a preliminary moral revolution,
a revolution accomplished in them by the acquired consciousness of their
rights and of their organic solidarity. It will be impossible to compare
the proletarians in whom this moral revolution shall have taken place
with the barbarians of the Middle Ages.

* * * * *

In my book _Socialismo et Criminalita_, published in 1883, and which
to-day my adversaries, including M. Garofalo (p. 128 _et seq._), try to
oppose to the opinions which I have upheld in my more recent book,
_Socialisme et science positive_ (the present work), I have developed
two theses:

I. That the social organization could not be _suddenly_ changed, as was
then maintained in Italy by the sentimental socialists, since the law of
evolution dominates with sovereign power the human world as well as the
inorganic and organic world;

II. That, by analogy, crime could not disappear _absolutely_ from among
mankind, as the Italian socialists of those days vaguely hinted.

Now, in the first place it would not have been at all inconsistent if,
after having partially accepted socialism, which I had already done in
1883, the progressive evolution of my thought, after having studied the
systematic, scientific form given to socialism by Marx and his
co-workers, had led me to recognize (apart from all personal advantage)
the complete truth of socialism. But, especially, precisely because
scientific socialism (since [the work of] Marx, Engels, Malon, de Paepe,
Dramard, Lanessan, Guesde, Schaeffle, George, Bebel, Loria, Colajanni,
Turati, de Greef, Lafargue, Jaures, Renard, Denis, Plechanow,
Vandervelde, Letourneau, L. Jacoby, Labriola, Kautsky, etc.) is
different from the sentimental socialism which I had alone in mind in
1883, it is for that very reason that I still maintain to-day these two
same principal theses, and I find myself in so doing in perfect harmony
with international scientific socialism.

And as to the absolute disappearance of all criminality, I still
maintain my thesis of 1883, and in the present book (Sec. 3), I have
written that, even under the socialist regime, there will be--though