"Rural India, though chiefly characterized by primitive usage, has been invaded by ideas that are intensely hostile to the old state of things It is primitive, _but not consistently primitive_. Competitive wages are paid side by side with customary wages. Prices are sometimes fixed by custom, but sometimes, too, by free economic causes. From the midst of a population deeply rooted in the soil, men are being carried away by the desire of better wages. In short, economic motives have suddenly and partially intruded themselves in the realm of primitive morality. And, if we turn to city India, we see a similar, though inverted, state of things.... In neither case has the mixture been harmonious or the fusion complete. Indeed, the two orders are too unrelated, too far apart, to coalesce with ease.... "India, then, is in a state of economic revolution throughout all the classes of an enormous and complex society. The only period in which Europe offered even faint analogies to modern India was the Industrial Revolution, from which even now we have not settled down into comparative stability. We may reckon it as a fortunate circumstance for Europe that the intellectual movement which culminated in the French Revolution did not coincide with the Industrial Revolution. If it had, it is possible that European society might have been hopelessly wrecked. But, as it was, even when the French Revolution had spent its force in the conquests of Napoleon, the Industrial Revolution stirred up enough social and political discontent. When whole classes of people are obliged by economic revolution to change their mode of life, it is inevitable that many should suffer. Discontent is roused. Political and destructive movements are certain to ensue. Not only the Revolutions of '48, but also the birth of the Socialist Party sprang from the Industrial Revolution.