8o 
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 succes 
sive epochs of creation, in order to admit that those amazing 
changes of which our globe has been the theatre were accom 
plished 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.