For instance, on page 17, in a style which is neither aristocratic nor bourgeois, he writes that “Bebel had the impudence to defend the Commune in a public session of the Reichstag;” and he forgets that the Commune of Paris is not to be judged historically by relying solely upon the revolting impressions left upon the mind by the artificial and exaggerated accounts of the bourgeois press of that time.  Malon and Marx have shown by indisputable documentary evidence and on impregnable historical grounds what the verdict on the Commune of the impartial judgment must be, in spite of the excesses which—­as M. Alfred Maury said to me at the Pere-Lachaise, one day in 1879—­were far surpassed by the ferocity of a bloody and savage repression.

In the same way, on pages 20-22, he speaks (I can not see why) of the “contempt” of Marxian socialists for sentimental socialism, which no Marxian has ever dreamt of despising, though we recognize it is little in harmony with the systematic, experimental method of social science.

And, on page 154, he seems to think, he is carrying on a scientific discussion when he writes:  “In truth, when one sees men who profess such doctrines succeed in obtaining a hearing, one is obliged to recognize that there are no limits to human imbecility.”

Ah! my dear Baron Garofalo, how this language reminds me of that of some of the classical criminologists—­do you remember it?—­who tried to combat the positivist school with language too much like this of yours, which conceals behind hackneyed phrases, the utter lack of ideas to oppose to the hated, but victorious heresy!

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But aside from this language, so strange from the pen of M. Garofalo, it is impossible not to perceive the strange contrast between his critical talent and the numerous statements in this book which are, to say the least, characterized by a naivete one would never have suspected in him.

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It is true that, on page 74, like an individualist of the good old days, and with an absolutism which we may henceforth call pre-historic, he deplores the enactment of even those civil laws which have limited the jus utendi et abutendi (freely, the right of doing what one will with one’s own—­Tr.), and which have “seriously maimed the institution of private property,” since, he says, “the lower classes suffer cruelly, not from the existence of great fortunes, but rather from the economic embarrassment of the upper classes” (page 77).  What boldness of critical thought and profundity in economic science!

And, in regard to my statement that contemporary science is altogether dominated by the idea and the fact of the social aggregate—­and, therefore, of socialism—­in contrast to the glorification of the individual, and, therefore, of individualism, which obtained in the Eighteenth Century, M. Garofalo replies to me that “the story of Robinson Crusoe was borrowed from a very trustworthy history,” and adds that it would be possible to cite many cases of anchorites and hermits “who had no need of the company of their fellows” (page 82).