ABSTRACT
One does not know social reality if one has seen it only from the outside and has ignored its foundations. In order to know how it is constituted, one has to know how it has constituted itself; that is, one must have followed historically the way in which it has developed. In order to be able to say, with even a slight chance of success, what will be, or what the society of tomorrow will be like, it is indispensable that one study the social forms of the distant past. In order to understand the present, one must step out of it.
