The room was small, and hung with a smoke-stained paper dating from the
pontificate of Pio Nono. Ancient lithographs were dependent from the
walls, representing Cavour with his tortoise-shell-framed spectacles
and collar-like beard, the leonine visage of Garibaldi, the stupendous
moustaches of Victor Emanuel, a classic placing side by side of the
combined symbols of the revolution and of the supreme power, a popular
testimony to the Italian spirit which excels in juxtapositions, and
in whose midst, in our own day, in Rome, the fulminating Pope and the
excommunicated King daily exchange assurances of good-neighbourship,
with an exquisite grasp of politics, and not without a certain flavour
of delicate comedy. The mahogany sideboard was laden with plated
chafing-dishes and alabaster goblets. The establishment affected for
new things a contempt appropriate to long-standing renown.
Seated around a table bedecked with roses, and with flasks of Chianti
before them, the five continued their philosophic discourse.
“It is quite true,” said Nicole Langelier, “that the heart fails in
the case of many men, when gazing into the abyss of future events. It
is moreover certain that our all too imperfect knowledge of facts past
and gone does not supply us with the elements required to enable us
to determine accurately what is to succeed them. However, since the
past of human social organisations is in part known to us, the future
of those societies, a continuation and consequence of their past, is
not wholly beyond our ken. It is not impossible to observe certain
social phenomena, and to define from the conditions under which they
have already occurred, the conditions under which they will reappear.
We are not barred, when witnessing the commencement of an order of
facts, from comparing it with a past order of analogous facts, and
from deducing from the completion of the second a like completion of
the first. By way of example: when observing that the forms of labour
are changeable, that serfdom has succeeded slavery, salaried labour,
serfdom, new methods of production may be anticipated; when it is shown
that industrial capital has for barely a century taken the place of
the small artisans and peasant property, one is led to ponder over the
form which is to succeed capital; when studying the manner in which
was carried out the redemption of the feudal burdens and conditions
of servitude, one is enabled to conceive how the redemption of the
means of production nowadays constituting private ownership may some
day be carried out. By studying the great Services of the State now in
operation, it is possible to form a conception of future socialistic
methods of production; and, after having thus investigated in several
respects the present and the past of human industry, we shall, lacking
certainties, determine by aid of probabilities whether collectivism
is to be realised some day, not because it is just, for there is no
reason for believing in the triumph of justice, but because it is
the necessary sequel to the present state of things, and the fatal
consequence of capitalistic evolution.
“Let us, if you like, take another example: we possess some experience
of the life and death of religions. The end of Roman polytheism in
particular, is familiar to us. Its lamentable end enables us to imagine
that of Christianity, whose decline we are witnessing.
“We may similarly seek to find out whether future humanity will be
bellicose or peaceful.”
“I am curious to learn,” said Joséphin Leclerc, “how to set about it.”