Far from being a material upheaval, the advent of socialism will be simply the culmination of the economic evolution now going on. Born, in its contemporaneous form, from the study of facts, socialism sees in the facts the controlling elements of the modifications to be effected. It makes no pretence of going in advance of the economic phenomena, it limits itself to following them, to adapting itself to conditions which it does not create and which it is not its part to create. Now, if, in all those cases where the means of production are already collectively owned by companies or trusts or are concentrated in the hands of single individuals, they can be placed at the disposition of ALL only by the substitution of society as a whole for their present capitalist possessors, in those cases in which the form of ownership of the means of labor is still truly individual, _i.e._, where they are still in the hands of those who themselves directly make use of them in actual work, it is not for society to force itself into the place of the present proprietors. The purpose of the interference of society, indeed, is to give, in the only form to-day possible, the means of production to the laborers who have them not, it is to restore the tools and materials of labor to those who have been robbed of them. It is not its business, then, to interfere in those cases where the laborers are still in possession of their tools and materials. And so the peasant will retain the patch of land he possesses and tills, the petty tools and implements will continue to belong to the artisan-manufacturer who himself works with them, until the facts shall lead them to renounce voluntarily this form of private ownership, no longer to their advantage, in order to enjoy the far more fruitful benefits of collective ownership and production.