I. We know that we shall not reach the future condition "without intense perturbations."[600] "That justice may be victorious, and the new thoughts become reality, there is need of a frightful storm to sweep away all this rottenness, to vivify torpid souls with its breath, and to restore self-sacrifice, self-denial, and heroism to our senile, decrepit, crumbling society."[601] There is need of "social revolution: that is, the people's taking possession of society's total stock of goods, and the abolition of all authorities."[602] "The social revolution is at the door,"[603] "it stands before us at the end of this century,"[604] "it will be here in a few years."[605] It is "the task which history sets for us,"[606] but "whether we will or not, it will be accomplished independently of our will."[607] 1. "The social revolution will be no uprising of a few days: we shall have to go through a period of three, four, or five years of revolution, till the transformation of the social and economic situation is completed."[608] "During this time what we have sown to-day will be coming up and bearing fruit; and he who now is yet indifferent will become a convinced adherent of the new doctrine."[609] Nor will the social revolution be limited to a narrow area. "We must not assume, to be sure, that it will break out in all Europe at once."[610] "Germany is nearer the revolution than people think";[611] "but whether it start from France, Germany, Spain, or Russia, it will anyhow be a European revolution in the end. It will spread as rapidly as that of our predecessors the heroes of 1848, and set Europe afire."[612] 2. The first act of the social revolution will be a work of destruction.[613] "The impulse to destruction, which is so natural and justifiable because it is at the same time an impulse to renovation, will find its full satisfaction. How much old trash there is to clear away! Does not everything have to be transformed, the houses, the cities, the businesses of manufacturing and farming,--in short, all the arrangements of society?"[614] "Everything that it is necessary to abolish should be destroyed without delay: the penitentiaries and prisons, the forts that threaten cities, the slums whose disease-laden air people have breathed so long."[615]