In the historical period the Graeco-Latin society struggled for _civil_
equality (the abolition of slavery); it triumphed, but it did not halt,
because to live is to struggle; the society of the middle ages struggled
for _religious_ equality; it won the battle, but it did not halt; and at
the end of the last century, it struggled for _political_ equality. Must
it now halt and remain stationary in the present state of progress?
To-day society struggles for _economic_ equality, not for an absolute
material equality, but for that more practical, truer equality of which
I have already spoken. And all the evidence enables us to foresee with
mathematical certainty that this victory will be won to give place to
new struggles and to new ideals among our descendants.

The successive changes in the subject-matter (or the ideals) of the
struggles for existence are accompanied by a progressive mitigation of
the methods of combat. Violent and muscular at first, the struggle is
becoming, more and more, pacific and intellectual, notwithstanding some
atavic recurrences of earlier methods or some psycho-pathological
manifestations of individual violence against society and of social
violence against individuals.

The remarkable work of Mr. Novicow[14] has recently given a signal
confirmation to my opinion, although Novicow has not taken the sexual
struggle into account. I will develop my demonstration more fully in
the chapter devoted to _l'avenir moral de l'humanité_ (the intellectual
future of humanity), in the second edition of _Socialismo e
Criminalità_.

For the moment I have sufficiently replied to the anti-socialist
objection, since I have shown not merely that the disproportion between