I am using the word "religious" in this connection in its popular sense, meaning no more than that the revolutionary crowd rationalizes its dream of a new world-order in imagery which repeats over and over again the essentials of the Biblical "day of the Lord," or "kingdom of heaven" to be established in earth. This notion of cosmic regeneration is very evident in the various "utopian" socialist theories. The Fourierists and St. Simonists of the early part of the nineteenth century were extremely Messianic. So-called "scientific socialists" are now inclined to ridicule such idealistic speculation, but one has only to scratch beneath the surface of present-day socialist propaganda to find under its materialist jargon the same old dream of the ages. A great world-change is to come suddenly. With the triumph of the workers there will be no more poverty or ignorance, no longer any incentive to men to do evil to one another. The famous "Manifesto" is filled with such ideas. Bourgeois society is doomed and about to fall. Forces of social evolution inevitably point to the world-wide supremacy of the working class, under whose mild sway the laborer is to be given the full product of his toil, the exploitation of children is to cease, true liberty will be achieved, prostitution, which is somehow a bourgeois institution, is to be abolished, everyone will be educated, production increased till there is enough for all, the cities shall no more lord it over the rural communities, all alike will perform useful labor, waste places of the earth will become cultivated lands and the fertility of the soil will be increased in accordance with a common plan, the state, an instrument of bourgeois exploitation, will cease to exist; in fact, the whole wicked past is to be left behind, for as The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations, no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. In fine, In place of the old bourgeois society with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all. Le Bon says of the French Revolution: The principles of the Revolution speedily inspired a wave of mystic enthusiasm analogous to those provoked by the various religious beliefs which had preceded it. All they did was to change the orientation of a mental ancestry which the centuries had solidified.