study of anatomy or of the penal code or, inversely, tell him whose
brain is more highly developed than his muscles to dig the earth,
instead of observing with the microscope. They will each prefer the
labor for which they feel themselves best fitted.

The changes of occupation or profession will not be as considerable as
many imagine when society shall be organized under the collectivist
regime. When once the industries ministering to purely _personal_ luxury
shall be suppressed--luxury which in most cases insults and aggravates
the misery of the masses--the quantity and variety of work will adapt
themselves gradually, that is to say naturally, to the socialist phase
of civilization just as they now conform to the bourgeois phase.

Moreover, under the socialist regime, every one will have the fullest
liberty to declare and make manifest his personal aptitudes, and it will
not happen, as it does to-day, that many peasants, sons of the people
and of the lower middle class, gifted with natural talents, will be
compelled to allow their talents to atrophy while they toil as peasants,
workingmen or employees, when they would be able to furnish society a
different and more fruitful kind of labor, because it would be more in
Harmony with their peculiar genius.

The one essential point is this: In exchange for the labor that they
furnish to society, society must guarantee to the peasant and the
artisan, as well as to the one who devotes himself to the liberal
careers, conditions of existence worthy of a human being. Then we will
no longer be affronted by the spectacle of a ballet girl, for instance,
earning as much in one evening by whirling on her toes as a scientist, a
doctor, a lawyer, etc., in a year's work. In fact to-day the latter are
in luck if they do that well.