Certainly, “science for the sake of science,” is a formula very satisfactory to the avowed conservatives—­and that is only logical—­and also to the eclectics; but modern positivism prefers the formula of “science for life’s sake” and, therefore, thinks that “the ripeness of the times” and “the new economic arrangement” will certainly not be realized by spontaneous generation and that therefore it is necessary to act, in harmony with the inductions of science, in order to bring this realization to pass.

To act, but how?

There is the question of methods and tactics, which differentiates utopian socialism from scientific socialism; the former fancied it possible to alter the economic organization of society from top to bottom by the improvised miracle of a popular insurrection; the latter, on the contrary, declares that the law of evolution is supreme and that, therefore, the social revolution can be nothing but the final phase of a preliminary evolution, which will consist—­through scientific study and propaganda work—­in the realization of the exhortation of Marx:  Proletarians of all countries, unite!

There then is the explanation of the easy enigma, presented by the fact that socialism, though revolutionary in its programme, follows the laws of evolution in its method of realization, and that is the secret of its vitality and power, and that is also what makes it so essentially different from that mystical and violent anarchism, which class prejudices or the exigencies of venal journalism assert is nothing but a consequence of socialism, while in fact it is the practical negation of socialism.

* * * * *

Finally, as a synthetic conclusion, I think it worth while to show that, while in the beginning of his book M. Garofalo starts out in open hostility to socialism with the intention of maintaining an absolutely uncompromising attitude, declaring on the first page that he has written his book “for those who are called the bourgeois,” in order to dissuade them from the concessions which they themselves, in their own minds, can not prevent themselves from making to the undeniable truth of the socialist ideal, when he reaches the end of his polemic, the irresistible implications of the facts force M. Garofalo to a series of eclectic compromises, which produce on the reader, after so many accusations and threats of repression, the depressing impression of a mental collapse, as unforeseen as it is significant.

Indeed, M. Garofalo, on page 258, recognizes the usefulness of combinations of laborers to enable them “to resist unjust demands,” and even declares it obligatory upon factory-owners “to assure a life-pension to their laborers who have served them long.” (p. 275.) And he demands for the laborers at all events “a share in the profits” (p. 276); he recognizes also that the adult out of work and in good health has the right to assistance, no less than the sick man or the cripple (p. 281).