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THE  SOCIALISM  OF  TO-DAY.

of  its  career,  and  in  a  thousand  years  laws  and  institutions  will
be  very  different  from  what  they  are  to-day.  The  visible
and  universal  progress  of  democracy  enables  us  to  foresee  that
there  will  be  more  equality.  But  just  as  in  geology  we  have
abandoned  the  theories  of  great  cosmic  revolutions  and  successive ­
  epochs  of  creation,  in  order  to  admit  that  those  amazing
changes  of  which  our  globe  has  been  the  theatre  were  accomplished ­
  slowly  and  insensibly  by  the  constant  action  of  the
ordinary  forces  of  nature,  so  in  sociology,  we  are  coming  to
believe  that  profound  modifications  can  and  will  introduce
themselves  into  the  social  organization,  but  that  they  will  take
place  slowly  and  insensibly,  according  as  men  acquire  more
intelligence,  more  learning,  a  higher  sense  of  right,  and  a  more
complete  knowledge  of  the  conditions  of  economic  production.