1st.  That of the conservatives, such as M. Garofalo.  These, judging the world, not by the conditions objectively established, but by their own subjective impressions, consider that they are well enough off under the present regime, and contend that everything is for the best in this best of all possible worlds, and oppose in all cases, with a very logical egoism, every change which is not merely a superficial change;

2nd.  That of the reformers, who, like all the eclectics, whose number is infinite, give, as the Italian proverb says, one blow to the cask and another to the hoop and do not deny—­O, no!—­the inconveniences and even the absurdities of the present ... but, not to compromise themselves too far, hasten to say that they must confine themselves to minor ameliorations, to superficial reforms, that is to say, to treating the symptoms instead of the disease, a therapeutic method as easy and as barren of abiding results in dealing with the social organism as with the individual organism;

3rd.  That, finally, of the revolutionaries, who rightly call themselves thus because they think and say that the effective remedy is not to be found in superficial reforms, but in a radical reorganization of society, beginning at the very foundation, private property, and which will be so profound that it will truly constitute a social revolution.

It is in this sense that Galileo accomplished a scientific revolution; for he did not confine himself to reforms of the astronomical system received in his time, but he radically changed its fundamental lines.  And it is in this same sense that Jacquart effected an industrial revolution, since he did not confine himself to reforming the hand-loom, as it had existed for centuries, but radically changed its structure and productive power.

Therefore, when socialists speak of socialism as revolutionary, they mean by this to describe the programme to be realized and the final goal to be attained and not—­as M. Garofalo, in spite of the dictionary, continues to believe—­the method or the tactics to be employed in achieving this goal, the social revolution.

And right here appears the profound difference between the method of sentimental socialism and that of scientific socialism—­henceforth the only socialism in the civilized world—­which has received through the work of Marx, Engels and their successors that systematic form which is the distinctive mark of all the evolutionary sciences.  And that is why and how I have been able to demonstrate that contemporary socialism is in full harmony with the scientific doctrine of evolution.

Socialism is in fact evolutionary, but not in the sense that M. Garofalo prefers of “waiting patiently until the times shall be ripe” and until society “shall organize spontaneously under the new economic arrangement,” as if science necessarily must consist in Oriental contemplation and academic Platonism—­as it has done for too long—­instead of investigating the conditions of actual, every-day life, and applying its inductions to them.