And this is so true that the most clear-sighted conservatives, even though they are atheists, regret that the religious sentiment—­that precious narcotic—­is diminishing among the masses, because they see in it, though their pharisaism does not permit them to say it openly, an instrument of political domination.[34]

Unfortunately, or fortunately, the religious sentiment cannot be re-established by royal decree.  If it is disappearing, the blame for this cannot be laid at the door of any particular individual, and there is no need of a special propaganda against it, because its antidote impregnates the air we breathe—­saturated with the inductions of experimental science—­and religion no longer meets with conditions favorable to its development as it did amid the superstitious ignorance of past centuries.

I have thus shown the direct influence of modern science, science based on observation and experiment,—­which has substituted the idea of natural causality for the ideas of miracle and divinity,—­on the extremely rapid development and on the experimental foundation of contemporary socialism.

Democratic socialism does not look with unfriendly eyes upon “Catholic Socialism” (the Christian Socialism of Southern Europe), since it has nothing to fear from it.

Catholic socialism, in fact, aids in the propagation of socialist ideas, especially in the rural districts where religious faith and practices are still very vigorous, but it will not win and wear the palm of victory ad majorem dei gloriam.  As I have shown, there is a growing antagonism between science and religion, and the socialist varnish cannot preserve Catholicism.  The “earthly” socialism has, moreover, a much greater attractive power.

When the peasants shall have become familiar with the views of Catholic socialism, it will be very easy for democratic socialism to rally them under its own flag—­they will, indeed, convert themselves.

Socialism occupies an analogous position with regard to republicanism.  Just as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individual conscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair which interests only a part of the bourgeoisie.  Certainly, by the time that socialism draws near to its day of triumph, atheism will have made immense progress, and a republican form of government will have been established in many countries which to-day submit to a monarchical regime.  But it is not socialism which develops atheism, any more than it is socialism which will establish republicanism.  Atheism is a product of the theories of Darwin and Spencer in the present bourgeois civilization, and republicanism has been and will be, in the various countries, the work of a portion of the capitalist bourgeoisie, as was recently said in some of the conservative newspapers of Milan (Corriere della sera and Idea liberale), when “the monarchy shall no longer serve the interests of the country,” that is to say of the class in power.