life are at work), are transformed from the invisible microbe to the
highest form, man.

The anthropocentric illusion rebelled against the word of Darwin,
accusing him of lowering the human life to the level of the dirt or of
the brute. But a disciple of Darwin gave the right answer, while
propagating the Darwinian theory at the university of Jena. It was
Haeckel, who concluded: "For my part, and so far as my human
consciousness is concerned, I prefer to be an immensely perfected ape
rather than to be a degenerated and debased Adam."

Gradually the anthropocentric illusion has been compelled to give way
before the results of science, and today the theories of Darwin have
become established among our ideas. But another illusion still remains,
and science, working in the name of reality, will gradually eliminate
it, namely the illusion that the nineteenth century has established a
permanent order of society. While the geocentric and anthropocentric
illusions have been dispelled, the illusion of the immobility and
eternity of classes still persists. But it is well to remember that in
Holland in the sixteenth century, in England in the seventeenth, in
Europe since the revolution of 1789, we have seen that freedom of
thought in science, literature and art, for which the bourgeoisie
fought, triumphed over the tyranny of the mediaeval dogma. And this
condition, instead of being a glorious but transitory stage, is supposed
to be the end of the development of humanity, which is henceforth
condemned not to perfect itself any more by further changes. This is the
illusion which serves as a fundamental argument against the positive
school of criminology, since it is claimed that a penal justice
enthroned on the foundations of Beccaria and Carrara would be a
revolutionary heresy. It is also this illusion which serves as an