126 
THE SOCIALISM OF TO-DAY. 
man and denounces the rich idler. There is, therefore, no more 
solid foundation for the demand of reforms on behalf of the 
disinherited classes. 
And yet Social Democracy repudiates it, and tries to crush 
it, because, by opening up the prospect of a future life, it tends 
to make men resigned to the ills of the present one. No 
doctrine is more calculated than atheistic materialism, to in 
flame the hearts of working men with rage and hatred against 
the system of society which determines their present con 
dition, and therefore it is that the apostles of anarchical 
revolution adopt and propagate it as their gospel. Accord 
ingly, in Russia, we see that Atheism gives birth to Nihilism, 
which arms itself with the dagger, and avails itself of incen 
diarism, and all those perfected means of destruction that 
science invents. 
So long as his object is merely to show the beneficent in 
fluence which the application of Christian principles to social 
problems would effect, the Bishop of Mayence writes pages of 
eloquence and pathos. But as soon as he is obliged to come 
down to the lower regions of Political Economy, and point out 
the practical means of improving the condition of the working 
men, he becomes involved in difficulties. He even has to 
borrow from Lassalle the idea of productive co-operative asso 
ciations, by means of which that Socialist agitator promised to 
effect a complete transformation of the social organism. 
The danger of the actual situation comes from the antago 
nism between capital and labour. But if the same individual 
is at once capitalist and labourer, harmony is established. If 
the present wage-earner could but own a part of the mill, the 
farm, the railway, or the mine, where he is employed, he would 
receive a share of the profits, over and above his wages. The 
war between classes would cease, because there would be only 
one class, every capitalist working, and every working man 
possessing capital. The ultimate object, therefore, is to collect 
all the instruments of production in the hands of co-operative 
societies, in order to establish, in the great industries of modern 
times, organization of labour, similar to that of the trade-guilds 
of the Middle Ages. To attain this object, the Bishop of