Chapter LXXX: Section LXXIX: Socialism And Communism. (Continued.)

What has just been said will serve to explain why, in the following four periods of the world’s history, socialistic and communistic ideas have been most widespread: among the ancients at the time of the decline of Greece,(476) and in that of the degeneration of the Roman Republic;(477) among the moderns in the age of the Reformation,(478) and again, in our own day.(479)