{"collection":"philosophy-ethics","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_57671/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_57671","id":"gutenberg_57671","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/57671","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Science - Biology","Category: Sociology","Evolution","Socialism","Sociology"],"text":"Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed\nProofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was\nproduced from images generously made available by The\nInternet Archive)\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Note: Italic text is enclosed in _underscores_, boldface\nin =equals signs=.\n\n\n\n\n  EVOLUTION\n  SOCIAL AND ORGANIC\n\n  BY\n  ARTHUR M. LEWIS\n\n  THIRD EDITION\n\n  CHICAGO\n  CHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY\n  1908\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n                                                 Page\n     I  THALES TO LINNAEUS                          7\n\n    II  LINNAEUS TO LAMARCK                        24\n\n   III  DARWIN\u2019S \u201cNATURAL SELECTION\u201d               38\n\n    IV  WEISMANN\u2019S THEORY OF HEREDITY              60\n\n     V  DE VRIES\u2019 \u201cMUTATION\u201d                       81\n\n    VI  KROPOTKIN\u2019S \u201cMUTUAL AID\u201d                   97\n\n   VII  A REPLY TO HAECKEL                        115\n\n  VIII  SPENCER\u2019S \u201cSOCIAL ORGANISM\u201d               133\n\n   IX  SPENCER\u2019S INDIVIDUALISM                    149\n\n    X  CIVILIZATION--WARD AND DIETZGEN            168\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE.\n\n\nThe contents of this volume consist of the first ten lectures of the\nthirty-five in the Winter course of 1907\u201308. They were delivered in\nthe Garrick Theater, Chicago, on Sunday mornings to crowded houses.\nOn several occasions half as many people were turned away as managed\nto get in. If these lectures meet with as warm a reception when read\nas they did when heard, I shall be more than satisfied. For a fuller\ndiscussion of the Greek period, briefly dealt with in the first\nlecture, see Edward Clodd\u2019s \u201cPioneers of Evolution\u201d to which work the\nearly part of this lecture is greatly indebted.\n\nEvery lecture proceeds on the assumption, that a knowledge of\nthe natural sciences, and especially the great revolutionizing\ngeneralizations which they have revealed, is indispensable to a modern\neducation.\n\nThis position is by no means new. It pervades the classic literature of\nSocialism throughout. Liebknecht, speaking of Marx and himself says:\n\u201cSoon we were on the field of Natural Science, and Marx ridiculed\nthe victorious reaction in Europe that fancied it had smothered the\nrevolution and did not suspect that Natural Science was preparing a\nnew revolution.\u201d\n\nThe only thing I have succeeded in doing which is at all new, is\npresenting these so-called heavy subjects in a way that attracts and\nretains a large and enthusiastic audience Sunday after Sunday eight\nmonths of the year.\n\nThese lectures, nothwithstanding their phenomenal success, have\naroused some opposition, in certain quarters among Socialists. This\nopposition arises almost wholly from the fact that the Socialists in\nquestion have yet to learn what their own standard literature contains.\nWhen they make that discovery they will be obliged to do one of two\nthings, reject the Socialist philosophy or cease opposing its public\npresentation.\n\nA second thought will show that they may do neither. There is a type of\nbrain the specimens of which are very numerous, which seems to possess\nthe faculty of keeping different kinds of knowledge and contradictory\nideas, in separate, water-tight compartments. Thus, as these ideas\nnever come together there is no collision.\n\nThe most conspicuous example of this is the man who accepts and openly\nproclaims the truth of the materialistic conception of history--the\ntheory that, among other things, explains the origin, functions, and\nchanges of religion, just as it does those of law--yet the very man\nwho boasts of his concurrence in this epoch-making theory, using one\nlobe of his brain, will, while using the other lobe, and with still\ngreater fervency, maintain that the Socialist philosophy has nothing\nto do with religion at all, but is an \u201ceconomic\u201d question only. The\nleft lobe knows not what the right lobe is doing. Dietzgen described\nthese Comrades as \u201cdangerous muddle-heads.\u201d He might have omitted the\nadjective. A brain of this order renders its possessor harmless.\n\nThese well-meaning friends have offered a great deal of advice as to\nhow to conduct our meeting without \u201cdriving people away.\u201d Yet strangely\nenough our audience grew by leaps and bounds, until from seventy-five\nat the first lecture we are now crowding and often overcrowding one\nof the largest and finest theaters inside the loop. Meanwhile they\nfollowed their own advice and saw what was at the beginning a fine\naudience of five hundred grow less and less until it is less than fifty\nand sometimes falls below thirty. This does not seem to justify the cry\nthat the working class is hungering for Christian Socialism.\n\nFurther volumes of these lectures will carry the theories of Socialism\ninto yet other fields of science and philosophy.\n\nIn conclusion let me ask a certain type of correspondents to save my\ntime and their own. They say they agree with my views entirely; there\nis no question but I am right. And the lectures would be in place\nif delivered before university men. But workingmen (my top-lofty\ncorrespondents not included of course) have so many ignorant prejudices\nthat fearless scientific teaching is not acceptable to them. The size\nof my audience is sufficient disproof of the last statement. As to\nthe rest, it is just the existence of ignorant prejudices that makes\nthe fearless teaching of science necessary. Again, I have yet to\nbe convinced that there is any kind of knowledge which is good for\nuniversity men, but unfit for workingmen. Moreover, I positively refuse\nto have one kind of knowledge for myself, and another to give out to\nmy audience. This is the fundamental principle of priestcraft, and the\nworking class has had far too much of it already.\n\nOn this ground--that there is nothing higher than reality, that\nSocialism is in harmony with all reality and that in the end reality\nmust triumph--the future lectures of these courses will stand or fall.\n\n                    =Arthur M. Lewis.=\n\n  Chicago, Dec. 27, \u201907.\n\n\n\n\nEVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC\n\n\n\n\nI.\n\nTHALES TO LINNAEUS.\n\n\n\u201cEarly ideas,\u201d says Herbert Spencer, \u201care usually vague adumbrations\nof the truth,\u201d and however numerous may be the exceptions, this was\nundoubtedly the case with the evolutionary speculations of the ancient\nGreeks. The greatness of that remarkable republic finds one of its most\nstriking manifestations in the fact that so many great modern ideas\ntrace their ancestry back to Greece. Sir Henry Maine, the historical\njurist, said that, \u201cexcept the blind forces of nature, nothing moves\nthat is not Greek in its origin.\u201d Compared with her dreamy oriental\nneighbors, Greece shone like a meteor in a moonless night. As Professor\nBurnet says, \u201cThey left off telling tales. They gave up the hopeless\ntask of describing what was, when as yet there was nothing, and asked\ninstead what all things really are now,\u201d while the Oriental shrunk from\nthe search after causes, looking, as Professor Butcher aptly remarks\n\u201con each fresh gain of earth as so much robbery of heaven.\u201d\n\nThe Greeks very largely discarded the theological mind, peopled with\nits pious phantasms, and sought to probe into the nature of the\nmaterial universe. This is why we discover a fairly distinct, and\nsometimes startlingly clear \u201cadumbration\u201d of the theory of evolution\nrunning like a chain of gold through the immortal fragments of their\ngreatest thinkers.\n\nWhat is it that really is, and what that only seems to be? What\nis real, and what is only apparent? This is the theme which Greek\nphilosophy has in common with modern thought, and this is why the\nremnants of Greek literature are so precious in the twentieth century.\n\nThales, of Miletus, in Asia Minor, is conceded to have been the founder\nof Greek philosophy. \u201cHe asserted water to be the principle of all\nthings,\u201d says Diogenes Laertius, and he regarded all life as coming\nfrom water, a position by no means foreign to modern science.\n\nAnaximander, also a Milesian and a younger contemporary of Thales, who\nlike him flourished between 500 and 600 B.\u00a0C., said that the material\ncause of all things was the Infinite. \u201cIt is neither water nor any\nother of what are now called the elements, but a substance different\nfrom them which is infinite, from which arise all the heavens and the\nworlds within them.\u201d \u201cMan,\u201d he boldly asserts, \u201cis like another animal,\nnamely, a fish, in the beginning,\u201d a shrewd guess which is now an\nestablished fact.\n\nAnaximenes, the third and last of the Milesian philosophers, while\nfollowing his predecessors closely in time, disagreed with them as\nto the raw material of the universe. He declares it to be air which,\n\u201cwhen it is dilated so as to be rarer becomes fire while winds, on the\nother hand, are condensed air, Cloud is formed from air by \u2018felting\u2019\nand this, still further condensed, becomes water. Water, condensed\nstill more, turns to earth; and when condensed as much as it can be, to\nstones.\u201d All of which proves that Anaximenes had a very fertile brain.\n\nHerakleitos, one of the greatest of all Greek thinkers, lived for a\ntime at Ephesus and expressed the following forceful opinion of his\nfellow citizens: \u201cThe Ephesians would do well to hang themselves,\nevery grown man of them, and leave the city to beardless youths; for\nthey have cast out Hermodoros, the best man among them, saying: \u2018We\nwill have none who is best among us; if there be any such, let him be\nso elsewhere and among others.\u2019\u201d According to him everything comes\nfrom and returns to fire and \u201call things are in a state of flux like\na river.\u201d Here is the intellectual ancestor of Hegel with his great\nsaying. \u201cNothing is, everything is becoming.\u201d Herakleitos sagaciously\nobserved: \u201cYou cannot step twice into the same rivers, for fresh waters\nare ever flowing in upon you.\u201d\n\nParmenides, born at Elea about 515 B.\u00a0C., was poet and philosopher\nboth, and insisted in his hexameter verse that the universe is a unity,\nwhich neither came out of nothing, nor could, in any degree, pass away,\nthus anticipating by over 2,000 years Lavoisier\u2019s doctrine of the\npermanence of matter.\n\nEmpedocles, of Akragas in Sicily, about the same time, stated this\ngreat truth with still greater force and clearness: \u201cFools!--for they\nhave no far-reaching thoughts--who deem that what before was not,\ncomes into being or that aught can perish and be utterly destroyed.\nFor it cannot be that aught can arise from what in no way is, and it\nis impossible and unheard of that what is should perish; for it will\nalways be, wherever one may keep putting it.\u201d He also endeavored to\ncombine and reconcile the ideas of some of his predecessors, teaching\nthat all things come from four roots--water, air, fire and earth.\n\nAnaxagoras, born about 500 B.\u00a0C., was the first Greek to suffer for\nscience. He was brought to trial for asserting the sun to be a red hot\nstone, and it would have probably gone hard with him had not the mighty\nPericles been his friend. If the sun was merely a fiery ball, what\nbecame of the religion founded on the worship of Apollo?\n\nNearly a half a century earlier Xenophanes, of Colophon, had ventilated\nideas much more obnoxious to the priests. He had done for his age what\nFeuerbach did to the Nineteenth century--he had explained the origin of\nthe gods by Anthropomorphism. Said he: \u201cIf oxen or lions had hands, and\ncould paint with their hands and produce works of art as men do, horses\nwould paint the forms of the gods like horses and oxen like oxen. Each\nwould represent them with bodies according to the form of each. So the\nEthiopians make their gods black and snubnosed; the Thracians give\ntheirs red hair and blue eyes.\u201d Had Xenophanes lived at Athens, where a\nreligious revival had just taken place, he would have shared the fate\nwhich later overtook the impious Socrates. Luckily for Xenophanes,\nin the colony where he lived \u201cthe gods were left to take care of\nthemselves.\u201d Anaxagoras was the first to determine what causes the\neclipses and the illumination of the moon:--\u201cThe moon has not a light\nof her own but gets it from the sun. The moon is eclipsed by the earth\nscreening the sun\u2019s light from it. The sun is eclipsed at the new moon,\nwhen the moon screens it from us.\u201d\n\nThe Pythagoreans who must be distinguished from the medicine man\nPythagoras, from whom they only take their name indirectly, and not\nas disciples, believed the reality of the universe was to be found in\nnumbers. They were deceived into this absurdity by the exactness of\nmathematical conclusions. This was excusable among the Greeks to whom\narithmetical combinations were as wonderful as electrical phenomena are\nto us, but its revival in our day by astrologers and theosophists has\nno such justification.\n\nSocrates, born about 470 B.\u00a0C., at Athens, is described as \u201cpug-nosed,\nthick-lipped, big-bellied and bulging-eyed\u201d--the very opposite of the\nGreek ideal of beauty. He believed that knowledge itself would bring\nvirtue, and sought to discover the true ground of knowledge. His search\nbrought him into conflict with the religious bigotry of his day and he\nwas finally sentenced to death and died from drinking hemlock in 399\nB.\u00a0C. He wrote nothing and his work is preserved mainly through his\ninfluence on Plato.\n\nLeukippos and Demokritos are linked together through their statements\nof the atomic theory, made more than twenty centuries before Dalton.\nThey placed the permanent reality of things in numberless atoms, of\nwhich Leukippos said \u201cthere are an infinite number of them, and they\nare invisible owing to the smallness of their bulk.\u201d\n\nPlato we shall pass by; his metaphysical doctrine of ideas contributed\nlittle of value to the solution of the riddle of the universe.\n\nWe now come to the great Stagirite, Aristotle, founder of the\nexperimental school and father of natural history. Born in 384 B.\u00a0C.,\nhe entered the Academy under Plato when a boy of eighteen. When he was\nthirty-six Plato died, and Aristotle then left Athens. At forty-one he\nbecame the teacher of Alexander the Great. He was the greatest of all\nthe Greeks, and his studies took a wider range than had been embraced\nby any previous thinker.\n\nStageira, where he spent his boyhood, was on the Strynomid gulf, and\nhere he observed the variations and gradations between marine plants\nand animals. It is an evidence of his keen insight that he classified\nthe sponge as an animal. Compare this with Agassiz, the opponent\nof Darwinism, who, in the 19th century, declared the sponge to be a\nvegetable.\n\nAristotle insisted on observation and experience as the foundation of\nknowledge. \u201cWe must not accept a general principle from logic only, but\nmust prove its application to each fact. For it is in facts we must\nseek general principles, and these must always accord with facts.\u201d He\nrepudiated the idea of purpose in nature, saying, \u201cJupiter rains not\nthat corn may be increased, but from necessity.\u201d He came very near Von\nMohl\u2019s protoplasm when he said, \u201cGerms should have been first produced,\nand not immediately animals; and that soft mass which first subsisted\nwas the germ.\u201d\n\nPassing over the much misrepresented Epicurus we come two centuries\nlater to the illustrious Roman poet philosopher, Lucretius. In this\nlast century preceeding the Christian era, Greece had fallen from her\nhigh estate and become a Roman province. But while Rome had annexed\nGreece, Greek learning had conquered the Roman mind.\n\nLucretius in his poem, \u201cThe System of Nature,\u201d expounds, with\ngreat force, the atomic theory of his Greek forerunners. The first\nanthropologist, he comes so near to Spencer and Tylor that his ideas,\nand sometimes even his sentences smack of the 19th century. \u201cThe\npast history of man\u201d he asserts, \u201clies in no heroic or golden age,\nbut in one struggle out of savagery.\u201d Of the origin of language he\nsays, \u201cNature impelled them to utter the various sounds of the tongue,\nand use struck out the names of things.\u201d Of the early struggles of\nprimitive men he says, \u201cMan\u2019s first arms were hands, nails and teeth\nand stones and boughs broken off from the forests, and flame and fire,\nas soon as they had become known. Afterward the force of iron and\ncopper was discovered, and the use of copper was known before that\nof iron, as its nature is easier to work, and it is found in greater\nquantity. With copper they would labor the soil of the earth and stir\nup the billows of war. Then by slow steps the sword of iron gained\nground and the make of the copper sickle became a byword.\u201d The name\nof Lucretius closes the long line of the evolutionary pioneers of the\nancient world. There the golden vein ceases so far as thinking is\nconcerned, not to reappear until many centuries have passed.\n\nWith the decline and fall of the Roman empire, and the rise to power of\nChristianity, learning was driven from Europe and found refuge among\nthe Arabians. This brings us to the dark or middle ages. It is in the\ninterpretation of the phenomena of this period, that bourgeois free\nthinkers like Clodd and Draper break down. They tacitly assume that\nin Europe evolution was suspended for over a thousand years; and all\nbecause of the Christian church. They fail to recognize that deeper\ncause, the medieval form of wealth production, which gave the church\nits power to repress learning in the interest of the lords of the\nland, among which the church herself was greatest; owning as she did\none-third of the soil of Europe.\n\nThe bourgeois radical cannot perceive that during this period social\nprocesses were being gradually transformed and that an economic\nfoundation was being laid that would make possible the renaissance\nand put science in an impregnable position, and make the progressive\nacceptance of evolution inevitable. Engels says: \u201cThe Middle Ages were\nreckoned as a mere interruption of history by a thousand years of\nbarbarism. The great advances of the Middle Ages--the broadening of\nEuropean learning, the bringing into existence of great nations, which\narose, one after the other, and finally the enormous technical advances\nof the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries--all this no one saw\u201d.\n\nBut it cannot be denied that this was a terrible period for any thinker\nwho had the misfortune to be born in it. All that was great and noble\nin the thought of Greece and Rome was rigorously suppressed. The\n\u201cperfecting principle\u201d of Aristotle was wrested to theological uses.\nAn emaciated form of his philosophy, and a literal interpretation of\nthe scriptures, constituted the only permissible studies. Outside this\ndilution of Aristotle, the only thing in Greek thought which appealed\nto the medieval mind was the Pythagorean mystical use of numbers. The\nconclusions reached by that method were truly remarkable, especially\nwhen we remember that they engaged such notable men as Augustine, the\ncelebrated Bishop of Hippo.\n\nThese are examples: Because there are three persons in the trinity,\nFather, Son, and Holy Ghost, three orders in the church, bishops\npriests and deacons; three degrees of attainment, light, purity and\nknowledge; three virtues, faith, hope and charity, and three eyes in\na honeybee; therefore, there can only be three colors, red, yellow\nand blue. Because there were seven churches in the apocalypse, seven\ngolden candlesticks, seven cardinal virtues, seven deadly sins and\nseven sacraments; therefore, there could only be seven planets and\nseven metals. Because there were seventy-two disciples and seventy-two\ninterpreters of the old testament and seventy-two mystical names of\nGod; therefore there must be no more and no less than seventy-two\njoints in the human body.\n\nDuring this period, European cities had no paving or lighting, and\none could not step from a doorway in London or Paris without plunging\nankle deep in mud. They had practically no drainage and they were,\nat frequent intervals devastated by the plague. But the cities of\nAndalusia, built and governed by the Moors in Spain, were drained,\nwell lighted and solidly paved. They had public libraries and public\nschools. From their medical colleges Europe obtained the only doctors\nit had.\n\nIn the cities of Christian Europe these enlightened people were treated\nlike dogs, while in their wonderful cities, visiting Christians were\nmet with a hospitality and broad toleration wholly exceptional in the\nmiddle ages.\n\nIn Europe, even toward the close of this period, broad, scientific\nthinking was impossible. Nicholas Copernicus, in the 16th century,\nafraid of the faggot, carried as a secret locked in his own bosom,\nthat heliocentric theory which is the foundation of modern astronomy.\nHis great disciple Giordano Bruno, for expounding that theory with\nrare ability, after it was revealed by the great Prussian, was hunted\nthrough Europe like a wild animal and finally burned at the stake.\n\nFor the same reason, the third person in the trinity of the 16th\ncentury\u2019s greatest thinkers, Galileo, was harassed and humiliated, and\nat last died a prisoner in his own house.\n\nBut all through this period, despite its intellectual stagnation,\neconomic evolution proceeded, laying the foundation for a new\nintellectual superstructure. That evolution manifested itself chiefly\nin the rise and growth of a trading class. To the existence of such\na class in its society, the Arabians owed their greater liberality,\nand scientific spirit. When Vasca Da Gama sailed down the west coast\nof Africa and around the Cape of Good Hope into the Indian Ocean,\ntrusting to chance for the outcome of his voyage, he found the Arabians\ndirecting their vessels by a strange instrument which we now call the\nmariner\u2019s compass.\n\nThe merchants of Genoa and of Spain discovered that orthodox\nsuperstitions did not help but did seriously injure, their commerce. As\ncaptains for their ships they preferred for purely economic reasons,\nmen who had become infected with the ideas of navigation of the pagan\nArabians, to men who took their ideas of the universe from the city\nbishop or the village priest and kept their ships close to land,\nafraid lest they should sail off the edge of the world, or into that\ngreat hole where the angels put the sun at night, after they had\nfinished rolling it across the sky.\n\nIt was the growth and final triumph of this trading class, with\neconomic interests and a mode of wealth production that demanded the\nliberation of science, that abolished the thumbscrew and the stake.\nVoltaire, Rousseau, and the encyclopaedists were obnoxious to the\nfeudal regime, lay and clerical, because they were the prophets and\nmouthpieces of the rising bourgeoisie.\n\nThis class, by the emancipation of science, performed a lasting\nservice to the human race. The society in which it predominated, at\nonce produced a prolific crop of great thinkers. Sweden had Linnaeus,\nEngland had Lyell, Germany had Goethe; but the palm fell to France. In\nthe revolution France had suppressed the Sorbonne, that theological\ninstitution which had always shown itself the official and bitter enemy\nof science, and she soon after equipped scientific expeditions, which\ngave her the greatest thinkers of that day--Cuvier, St. Hilaire, and,\nmost illustrious of all that courageous pioneer of modern evolution,\nJean Lamarck.\n\nThe position of the capitalist class of a hundred years ago was very\ndifferent from that of today. Then it was the harbinger of progress;\nnow it is the stronghold of reaction. Its interests then were very\ndifferent from its interests now. Then it was called upon by destiny to\nsteer society into new waters; now destiny bids it, since its task is\ndone, to step aside that a new hand may grip the wheel. Then it fought\na social order which had had its day, now it is in the midst of social\nforces which it cannot administer. That was its lusty youth; this is\nits doddering old age.\n\nWhen the Bourgeoisie released science from feudal chains, it let loose\na force that carried it to victory, but, at that moment, it planted the\ngerms of its own future destruction. Today it reverses its attitude\nand would fain suppress science or at least prevent its reaching\nthe proletarian brain. But alas, it is in the grip of evolutionary\nprocesses of which it is merely a part, and it is bound, more securely\nthan Prometheus to the rock, to a mode of production which makes the\neducation of the proletariat a relentless necessity. The nation which\nkeeps its working class in semi-feudal darkness is ground to pieces by\nthe industrial competition of its neighbors--it goes to the wall in the\nstruggle for existence. Thus, in the language of Marx, it is obliged\nby present necessity to dig its own future grave.\n\nThe same inscrutable power that called it forth to lead society to a\nnew triumph, now relegates it to the rear and enthrones in its place a\nnew class, a propertyless working class, the child of the wage system,\ndestined to emancipate itself and, by the same stroke, the whole human\nrace. If this be not the mission of the working class, as an instrument\nof social evolution, the press and platform of the Socialist movement\nis a useless dissipation of energy. But this is precisely what Marx\nproved when he laid the foundation of the Socialist philosophy.\n\nEvery year brings its quota of evidence that the working class is\ngathering the political capacity and the social intelligence necessary\nto equip it for this tremendous task.\n\nNorway grew weary of Swedish dominance and decided to achieve national\nindependence. At once the Swedish Bourgeoisie began to gird up its\nloins for a bloody dynastic war. The pampered sons of its aristocracy,\nunable to do anything useful, were to have glory thrust upon them,\ncommanding, from the rear, regiments of Swedish workers to slaughter\nand be slaughtered by their exploited Norwegian brothers. But while\nthese sinister preparations were in full blast, a vast army of\nNorwegians crossed the boundary line into Sweden and met a Swedish army\nof the same proportions. There was no blood-shedding for both armies\nwere unarmed. In place of bayonets and needle guns they had their wives\nand children. They fraternized; they clasped hands; they tossed each\nother\u2019s babies in their arms. From that moment war was impossible. They\ncarried neither the national banner of Sweden nor of Norway. Over both\nthose great armies, now become one, singing their songs of working\nclass solidarity, there floated the red flag of the social revolution.\n\n\n\n\nII.\n\nLINNAEUS TO LAMARCK.\n\n\nFor a hundred years the word \u201cprogress\u201d has been a word to conjure\nwith. No proposal is too reactionary to be put forward in its name\nand the self-admitted conservative explains that he only wishes to\n\u201cconserve\u201d the good things which progress has bestowed upon us. It has\nbeen invoked on all sides of all questions, and no superstition was so\nancient or absurd, no theory so exploded, but it could be revived under\na new name and presented to the world as an infallible sign of the\nprogress of the age.\n\nBut during the last century men have arisen, who were dissatisfied\nwith a term that covered everything and meant nothing, and who were\ndetermined to find out what constituted progress and whether it had any\nexistence in the world of reality. More has been accomplished in this\nrespect during that century than in all the combined previous existence\nof the human race. The conception or idea of progress is the mental\nreflection of the process of evolution, which operates everywhere\nto the remotest niche or cranny in the material universe. The only\ndifference between progress and evolution is that evolution is a more\ninclusive term, including as it does phenomena which we should call\nretrogressive.\n\nThe men who laid the foundations of modern knowledge, and imparted\nsense and force to hitherto meaningless terms, were they who threw\naside theological phantasms and metaphysical speculations and set\nthemselves the task of gathering the facts and ascertaining the laws of\nthe real--the material--world. This is the method of science, and it is\nto this method that we owe all our knowledge of world problems.\n\nFor more than a thousand years this method was practically suspended.\nAny attempt, during that period, to make use of it was rigorously\nsuppressed, except among the pagan Arabians. Biological science stood\nstill, scarcely even marking time. Says Packard \u201cAfter Aristotle, no\nepoch-making zoologist arose until Linnaeus was born,\u201d a yawning chasm\nof thirteen hundred years.\n\nLinnaeus, born 1707, in Sweden, was the greatest naturalist of his time\nand might have done greater things for evolutionary ideas had it not\nbeen for the theological influences which restrained him. But, hindered\nas he was, he accomplished enough to entitle him to a place among the\nimmortals. \u201cHe found botany a chaos,\u201d says Prof. Thatcher, \u201cand left it\na unity.\u201d His contribution to science consists mainly in his system of\nclassification and nomenclature. Before Linnaeus nobody had been able,\nthough many had tried, to group and name animal and vegetable forms in\nsuch a manner as to rescue them from utter confusion. This is precisely\nwhat Linnaeus did when, by a happy idea, he adopted what is called the\n\u201cbinary nomenclature.\u201d\n\nThis great advance was by no means far-fetched; it is simply an\napplication of the double naming everywhere in use, as in the case of\nTom Smith, Fred Smith, James Smith, in which Smith is used to denote\nthe general or family name and Fred or Tom the particular or personal.\nIn the application of this system to species, Linnaeus reversed the\norder as we do when we enter the names of persons on an alphabetical\nlist, as Smith, Fred and Smith, James. As illustrations we will take\nthe two cases, one from the animal and one from the plant world,\nselected by Haeckel for the same purpose. The generic name for cat is\nFelis. The common cat is Felis domestica; the wildcat, Felis catus;\nthe panther, Felis pardus; the jaguar, Felis onca; the tiger, Felis\ntigris; the lion, Felis leo. All these second names are the names of\nthe six species of the one genus--Felis. As an example in botany take\nthe genus pine. According to Linnaeus the pine is Pinus abies; the fir,\nPinus picea; the larch, Pinus larix; the Italian pine, Pinus pinea;\nthe Siberian stone pine Pinus cembra; the knee timber, Pinus mughus;\nthe common pine, Pinus silvestris. The seven second names apply to the\nseven species of the genus Pinus.\n\nBut this is not all. Besides grouping the species into genera, Linnaeus\nclassified certain genera as belonging to the same \u201corder.\u201d Again he\narranged these \u201corders\u201d in \u201cclasses,\u201d all these classes belonged to one\nof the two great \u201ckingdoms,\u201d vegetable and animal.\n\nNot only was all this of great practical value but its theoretical\ninfluence has been incalculable. Linnaeus never saw, and probably would\nnot have dared to proclaim if he had, that the resemblances which made\nhis grouping possible, indicated a relationship based on descent from\ncommon ancestors. This was left for men of greater penetration and\ncourage living in a less theological age. Prelates who smiled on the\nobscene debaucheries of Louis the XV. had Linnaeus\u2019 writings prohibited\nfrom papal states, because they proved the existence of sex in plants.\n\nLinnaeus not only proved sex in plants but made it the foundation of\nhis classification. He also reminds us that plants were known to be of\nboth sexes by oriental people in early days. Living as they did on the\nfruit of the date-palms they found it necessary to plant male trees\namong the females. Their enemies in war time struck a terrible blow\nwhen they cut down the male trees, thereby reducing them to famine.\nSometimes the inhabitants themselves destroyed the male trees during\nimpending invasion, so that the enemy should find no sustenance in\ntheir country; a war measure similar to that of Russians who burned\nMoscow in the face of Napoleon.\n\nIn the same year that Sweden produced Linnaeus, France gave birth\nto Buffon. Rich and independent, he chose to devote a long life to\nthe study of natural history. He had remarkable powers of research\nand displayed genius in presenting the results of his investigation.\nBut alas! he had less courage than Linnaeus and he lived nearer\nthat terrible enemy of eighteenth century science, the theological\ndepartment of the University of Paris--the dreaded Sorbonne.\n\nAs long as he confined himself to the mere description of animals he\nwas a pet of the church, which seems to have pleased him, but when he\nbegan to draw evolutionary conclusions of real philosophical import and\nvalue, the Sorbonne at once opened its batteries. On these occasions\nBuffon\u2019s retreat was prompt and unprotesting. It might be remembered\nas some mitigation of his cowardice that while the reign of the stake\nand faggot did not extend into the 18th century and there was no danger\nof the fate of the fearless Bruno, yet so strong was religious bigotry\neven in this period that Rousseau was hunted out of France, his books\nburned by the public executioner, and Diderot went to jail. \u201cHardly a\nsingle man of letters of that time escaped arbitrary imprisonment,\u201d\nsays John Morley in his \u201cRousseau.\u201d\n\nThis was all very repugnant to the pride and vanity of Buffon and led\nhim to adopt a style of writing much in vogue a century earlier when\nthe theological hand was heavy as death. This method was to put forward\nthe new idea as a heresy or a mere fancy, explain it, and then proceed\nwith great show of earnestness to demolish it in favor of the orthodox\nview. This method succeeded admirably until it broke through the thick\nskulls of religious bigots that the case presented for the \u201cheresy\u201d was\nmore convincing than the pretended reply.\n\nA fine example of this appears in the fourth volume of Buffon\u2019s\n\u201cNatural History.\u201d \u201cIf we once admit\u201d says he, \u201cthat the ass belongs to\nthe horse family, and that it only differs from it because it has been\nmodified, we may likewise say that the monkey is of the same family\nas man, that it is a modified man, that man and the monkey have had a\ncommon origin like the horse and ass, that each family has had but a\nsingle source, and even that all the animals have come from a single\nanimal, which in the succession of ages has produced, while perfecting\nand modifying itself, all the races of other animals.... If it were\nknown that in the animals there had been, I do not say several species,\nbut a single one which had been produced by modification from another\nspecies; if it were true that the ass is only a modified horse, there\nwould be no limit to the power of nature, and we would not be wrong in\nsupposing that from a single being she has known how to derive, with\ntime, all the other organized beings.\u201d\n\nThere is no such clear statement of the evolutionary theory in the\n\u201cSystem of Nature\u201d of Linnaeus, and if Buffon had proclaimed these\nviews as his own and courageously defended them, he would have made\nhis name the greatest of the 18th century, and clothed himself\nwith immortality. But the stuff of martyrs did not enter into his\ncomposition, and the very next passage to the one above, translated\nreads--\u201cBut no! It is certain from revelation that all animals have\nalike been favored with the grace of an act of direct creation, and\nthat the first pair of every species issued fully formed from the hands\nof the creator.\u201d\n\nWhen the Sorbonne thought it was being fooled it compelled Buffon to\nrecant publicly and have his recantation printed. In that recantation\nhe announced, \u201cI abandon everything in my book respecting the formation\nof the earth and generally all which may be contrary to the narrative\nof Moses.\u201d\n\nThe impression we get from reading Buffon, is that he did not realize\nthe importance of those great evolutionary ideas which he stated so\nwell and repudiated as regularly. Had he done so and stood by them, he\nwould have been the Darwin of his day, but he would in all likelihood\nhave spent the latter part of his life in the Bastile.\n\nNot until forty years later do we meet the real and valiant precursor\nof Darwin, albeit a countryman of Buffon\u2019s, but with a more profoundly\nphilosophical mind and without his fear. This was Jean Baptiste\nLamarck, born at Bazentin, France, 1744, and educated at the college\nof the Jesuits at Amiens. He served in the seven years war and then\noccupied himself studying medicine and science at Paris. He died, poor\nand blind, in 1829.\n\nLamarck boldly proclaimed his unshakable faith in the doctrine of the\ntransformation of species, and defended it against the strong tide\nof popular disfavor and the overwhelming opposition provoked by the\nantagonism of the great zoologist Cuvier. Cuvier\u2019s opposition would\nhave crushed a weaker man but Lamarck bore bravely up and calmly left\nhis case for the future to decide. Cuvier held species to be constant,\nas was consonant with current and orthodox ideas. This made him a\nsocial favorite and the pet of the church, and honors were showered\nprofusely upon him to the end of his days. Not so Lamarck; although\nborn 25 years earlier, his theories were half a century in advance of\nCuvier\u2019s, and he paid the penalty that has so often overtaken those\npioneers whose vision anticipated the future.\n\n\u201cAttacked on all sides,\u201d says his friend and colleague, Geoffroy St.\nHilaire, \u201cinjured likewise by odious ridicule, Lamarck, too indignant\nto answer these cutting epigrams, submitted to the indignity with a\nsorrowful patience.... Lamarck lived a long while poor, blind, and\nforsaken, but not by me; I shall ever love and venerate him.\u201d Another\nwriter of that period exclaims, \u201cLamarck, thy abandonment, sad as it\nwas in thy old age, is better than the ephemeral glory of men who\nmaintain their reputation by sharing in the errors of their time.\u201d As\nto Cuvier, the one stain on his career is his unworthy attitude toward\nhis celebrated opponent and fellow worker. Lamarck had, with his usual\ngenerosity, aided and favored him when he first came to the Museum of\nNatural History at Paris, allowing him to hold, in addition to his\nown chair, which was in Vertebrate Zoology, the chair of Molluscs,\nwhich was in Lamarck\u2019s special field, where he had no equal, and which\nwas properly his. But Lamarck opposed, with great politeness and\nwithout mentioning his name the attempt made by Cuvier to harmonize\nscience with the orthodox theology of his day by means of that theory\nof \u201ccataclysms\u201d which in spite of its being strenuously defended by\nso recent a thinker as Agassiz, has been relegated to the limbo of\nexploded theories.\n\nWhen Lamarck died, Cuvier as his most notable contemporary was called\nupon to pronounce his eulogy. What a miserable and unworthy performance\nit was! Even after death, religious antipathy--that ever-flowing\nfountain of meanness--survived in Cuvier\u2019s breast, and De Blainville\nrecords that \u201cthe Academy did not even allow it to be printed in the\nform in which it was pronounced,\u201d and it is said that portions of\nit had to be omitted as unfit for publication. Haeckel, speaking of\nLamarck\u2019s great book, \u201cZoological Philosophy,\u201d complains that \u201cCuvier,\nLamarck\u2019s greatest opponent, in his \u2018Report on the Progress of Natural\nScience,\u2019 in which the most unimportant anatomical investigations are\nenumerated, does not devote a single word to this work, which forms an\nepoch in science.\u201d\n\nBut history has reversed the scales and posterity has repaired the\nwrong. That theory of biological evolution, which was despised and\nrejected by the builders of his day has become the corner-stone of\nmodern knowledge, while Cuvier\u2019s fantastic \u201cTheory of the Earth\u201d has\ngone to the museum of curiosities.\n\nLamarck\u2019s immortality is secured by his assertion and defense of the\ntheory of descent, alone. This theory is, that all existing species\nhave descended from ancestors who were in a vast number of cases, and\nultimately in all, very different from their present representatives;\nthat this difference is due, not to the total extinction of the\nprevious species by \u201ccataclysms,\u201d and the divine creation of new ones,\nas Cuvier maintained, but because previous species changed in adapting\nthemselves to a changed environment.\n\nBut Lamarck has another claim to a niche in the Pantheon of Science.\nAs the conviction gained ground that species were not fixed and\nimmutable as they came from the hands of an alleged creator, but were\nthe products of an evolutionary development extending through immense\nperiods of time, another question arose and called for an answer. That\nquestion was--\u201cBy what process?\u201d\n\nCharles Darwin is the most illustrious of all the sons of science\nbecause he answered that question. Lamarck gave an answer, and the\nquestion as to whether that answer is entitled to be incorporated\nin the answer of Darwin, as a supplementary amendment is sometimes\nmade a part of the motion, still divides the biological world into\ntwo camps. But in that controversy between the Weismannians and the\nNeo-Lamarckians, aptly called \u201cThe Battle of the Darwinians,\u201d no matter\nwhat becomes of the Lamarckian factor, all are agreed that the \u201cNatural\nSelection\u201d of Darwin is impregnable.\n\nLamarck\u2019s theory may be summed up as follows--\n\n(1.) Every change in the environment of animals creates for them new\nneeds.\n\n(2.) These new needs will compel these animals to adopt new habits and\ndiscard some old ones, and these needs and habits will produce and\ndevelop new organs.\n\n(3.) The development or disappearance of organs depends on their use or\ndisuse.\n\n(4.) The effects of use or disuse, acquired by animals, are transmitted\nby heredity to their offspring.\n\nThis fourth factor has split the biological world since Weismann\nrepudiated it in 1883.\n\nAs a typical case of the operation of his theory, Lamarck gives the\nfollowing: \u201cThe serpents having taken up the habit of gliding along the\nground, and of concealing themselves in the grass, their body, owing to\ncontinually repeated efforts to elongate itself so as to pass through\nnarrow spaces, has acquired a considerable length disproportionate to\nits size. Moreover limbs would have been very useless to these animals,\nand consequently would not have been employed because long legs would\nhave interfered with their need of gliding, and very short legs, not\nbeing more than four in number, would have been incapable of moving\ntheir body. Hence the lack of use of these parts having been constant\nin the races of these animals, has caused the total disappearance of\nthese same parts, although really included in the plan of organization\nof animals of their class.\u201d\n\nThe idea of the serpent getting its long body, or the giraffe its long\nneck, or shore birds their long legs by \u201cstretching,\u201d has brought a\ngood deal of ridicule upon Lamarck\u2019s theory, and that part of it has\nnever been taken very seriously.\n\nThis mistake however, will no more affect Lamarck\u2019s title to a place\namong the immortals, than will the equally unfortunate theory of\n\u201cpangenesis\u201d endanger the status of his still greater successor--Darwin.\n\nLamarck\u2019s glory is that he boldly proclaimed and largely proved the\ngeneral theory of descent--biological evolution.\n\nWe shall now proceed to a consideration of the efforts of the great\nsavants who have succeeded him, to ascertain its processes.\n\n\n\n\nIII.\n\nDARWIN\u2019S NATURAL SELECTION.\n\n\nIn the year 1906, the paper which has the largest circulation among\nEnglish Socialists, \u201cThe Clarion,\u201d took a vote of its readers as\nto whom they considered to be the greatest man, the man who had\ncontributed most to the progress of the race, which England had\nproduced. By an overwhelming majority the place of honor went to\nCharles Darwin. That vote was as much a vindication of English\nSocialists as it was of the man whose name has become almost a synonym\nfor \u201cmodern science.\u201d\n\nLiebknecht, in his \u201cBiographical Memoirs of Karl Marx\u201d, speaking of\nMarx and himself, says: \u201dWhen Darwin drew the consequences of his\ninvestigations and presented them to the public, we spoke for months of\nnothing else but Darwin and the revolutionizing power of his scientific\nconquests.\u201d\n\nLeopold Jacoby writes thus: \u201cThe same year in which appeared Darwin\u2019s\nbook (1859) and coming from a quite different direction, an identical\nimpulse was given to a very important development of social science by\na work which long passed unnoticed, and which bore the title: \u201cCritique\nof Political Economy\u201d by Karl Marx--it was the forerunner of Capital.\nWhat Darwin\u2019s book on the \u201cOrigin of Species\u201d is on the subject of the\ngenesis and evolution of organic life from non-sentient nature up to\nMan, the work of Marx is on the subject of the genesis and evolution\nof association among human beings, of States, and the social forms of\nhumanity.\u201d\n\nCommenting on this passage of Jacoby\u2019s Enrico Ferri says: \u201cAnd this\nis why Germany, which has been the most fruitful field for the\ndevelopment of the Darwinian theories, is also the most fruitful field\nfor the intelligent, systematic propaganda of socialist ideas. And it\nis precisely for this reason that in Berlin, in the windows of the\nbook-stores of the socialist propaganda, the works of Charles Darwin\noccupy the place of honor beside those of Karl Marx.\u201d\n\nFrederick Engels, in his reply to Duehring, speaks of Darwin as\nfollows: \u201cHe dealt the metaphysical conception of nature the heaviest\nblow by his proof that all organic beings, plants, animals, and man\nhimself, are the products of a process of evolution going on through\nmillions of years. In this connection Darwin must be named before all\nothers.\u201d\n\nAgain, in the preface to the \u201cCommunist Manifesto\u201d speaking of the\nmaterialistic conception of history, he says: \u201cThis proposition, in my\nopinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin\u2019s theory has done\nfor biology.\u201d\n\nAnd speaking at the grave-side of his illustrious colleague--Marx, he\nsaid: \u201cJust as Darwin discovered the law of development in organic\nnature, so Marx discovered the law of development in human society.\u201d\n\nSays August Bebel, in \u201cWoman,\u201d \u201cMarx, Darwin, Buckle, have all three,\neach in his own way, been of the greatest significance for modern\ndevelopment and the future form and growth of human society will, to an\nextreme degree, be shaped and guided by their teaching and discoveries.\u201d\n\nAnd Kautsky in his work on ethics declares that Darwin\u2019s discoveries\n\u201cbelong to the greatest and most fruitful of the human intellect, and\nenable us to develop a new critique of knowledge.\u201d\n\nErnest Untermann, in his latest work \u201cMarxian Economics,\u201d well says:\n\u201cMarx discovered the specific laws of social development among human\nbeings. * * * But while doing this, it never occurred to him to\ndisregard the results of Darwin\u2019s work. On the contrary, he knew the\nart of combining Darwin\u2019s results with his own, without doing violence\nto either.\u201d\n\nThis evidence of the general consensus of opinion among Socialist\nscholars as to the value of Darwin\u2019s work and its special importance\nfor Socialism could easily be enlarged indefinitely. But enough\nhas been cited to show that a comprehensive grasp of the Socialist\nphilosophy implies a knowledge of Darwinian theories.\n\nThe greatness of Darwin\u2019s work has two aspects; the immense impetus\nhe gave to the general theory of evolution, and, his discovery of its\nmain process, \u201cnatural selection.\u201d In the popular mind this distinction\nis lost in confusion and a great army of popular but ill-informed\nexpounders have added to the muddle. The two things although closely\nrelated--cause and effect--are yet quite distinct, and a clearer\nunderstanding of Darwin\u2019s work is made possible by the distinction\nbeing kept in mind. The honor of having discovered \u201cnatural selection\u201d\nDarwin shares with Wallace only; as a contributor to the theory of\nevolution, he is one of a long and illustrious line. But even here he\nis the greatest of them all precisely because of his specific discovery\nwhich, by explaining how evolution works--at least among living\nthings, (biology)--has made the general theory impregnable.\n\nBefore proceeding to that specific theory let us clearly understand\nthat evolution has ceased to be a theory merely, it is also a well\nestablished fact. Anyone who denies this has no part or lot in the\nintellectual life of the last half century. Such a one, as Professor\nGiddings recently said, \u201cinhabits a world of intellectual shades. He\ncannot grasp the earthly interests of the twentieth century.\u201d\n\nEvery science in the biological hierarchy has contributed its quota to\nthe establishment of the theory of evolution, and that theory in return\nhas, in one department after another, produced order and system where\nbefore nothing existed but a conglomerate mass of apparently unrelated\nfacts. So thoroughly has the theory impregnated every branch of science\nthat an intelligent dentist must be an evolutionist.\n\nThe chief honors fall to the two sciences Ontogeny and Phylogeny.\nOntogeny deals with the history of the germ from its beginning as\nan egg to its full fruition as a fully developed individual or as\nHaeckel defines it, \u201cthe history of the evolution of individual\nhuman organisms.\u201d Phylogeny is defined by the same authority as,\n\u201cthe history of the evolution of the descent of man, that is, of the\nevolution of the various animal forms through which, in the course of\ncountless ages, mankind has gradually passed to its present form.\u201d\n\nI mention these two sciences together because it is by comparing\nthem that their chief significance appears. It is one of the most\nastonishing discoveries of science and at the same time one of the\nmost convincing proofs of evolution, that the whole process of the\ndevelopment of the human race from the lowest or simplest forms, which\nconstitutes the subject-matter of phylogeny, is reproduced in brief in\nthe development of the embryo of the individual. This remarkable fact\nHaeckel named \u201cthe biogenetic principle.\u201d\n\nDarwin\u2019s chief claim however to a pedestal in the hall of fame rests on\nhis discovery of \u201cnatural selection.\u201d\n\nDuring his memorable voyage on \u201cThe Beagle\u201d he observed that there was\nno essential connection between a species\u2019 reproductive powers and the\nnumber of its population. As this discovery plays an important part\nin his theory we will let him speak for himself. In his \u201cJournal of\nResearches\u201d he gives the following case, with his conclusion: \u201cI was\nsurprised to find, on counting the eggs of a large white Doris (a kind\nof sea slug) how extraordinarily numerous they were. From two to five\neggs (each three thousandths of an inch in diameter) were contained in\na spherical little case. These were arranged two deep in transverse\nrows forming a ribbon. The ribbon adhered to the rock in an oval\nsphere. One which I found, measured nearly twenty inches in length and\nhalf inch in breadth. By counting how many balls were contained in a\ntenth of an inch in the row, and how many rows in an equal length of\nthe ribbon, on the most moderate computation there were six hundred\nthousand eggs. Yet this Doris was certainly not very common: although I\nwas often searching under the stones I saw only seven individuals. No\nfallacy is more common among naturalists, than that the numbers of an\nindividual species depend on its powers of propagation.\u201d\n\nThis instance is moderate compared with multitudes of others. The\nquestion then arises as to why, of such a numerous progeny, only a\nsufficient number reach adult stage as will replace the parent stock so\nthat population remains practically stationary.\n\nHere Darwin became indebted to Dr. Malthus who, but for that\nindebtedness would have been forgotten ere this. In his \u201cEssay on\nPopulation\u201d Malthus points out various \u201cchecks\u201d to the increase of\npopulation. His main theory was that the population tends to increase\nmore rapidly than the food supply. The Reverend Doctor, having begotten\ntwelve children of his own, felt \u201ccalled\u201d to point out to British\nparents the desirability and even necessity of limiting their families\nin the interest of society. Malthus applied his theory to human society\nwhere it is palpably false. Darwin transferred it to the natural\nworld where it proved to be a great truth. The obvious explanation of\nthis paradox is: that man, by agriculture and industry, can increase\nhis food supply to a greater proportion than any probable or even\npossible increase of population. Animals cannot; their food supply is\nbeyond their control; they have no power to artificially increase the\nsupply. This difference totally destroyed the value of Malthus\u2019 book\nas a treatise on political economy. His immortality is assured solely\nbecause he accidentally contributed a link to Darwin\u2019s chain.\n\nAnd now Darwin has travelled on his great journey thus far: Animals\npropagate enormously but their population generally does not increase.\nThe main reason for this, though there are others, is, that their\nnumber is limited by the amount of food available. Therefore, if\ntwo parents produce ten thousand only two or three individuals will\nreach maturity: the rest will perish. The remainder of the problem,\nwhich still remained for Darwin to solve, was: first, is there any law\nwhich determines which shall survive and which shall be destroyed; and\nsecond, if there is such a law, will that law explain and thus, at the\nsame time, prove, the origin of new species? It is precisely because\nDarwin solved both points of this tremendous problem with a clear and\nirrefutable affirmative that he occupies the foremost place in the\nannals of science.\n\nProfessor John Fiske said: \u201cThere is one thing which a man of original\nscientific or philosophical genius in a rightly ordered world should\nnever be called upon to do. He should never be called upon to earn a\nliving; for that is a wretched waste of energy, in which the highest\nintellectual power is sure to suffer serious detriment, and runs the\nrisk of being frittered away into hopeless ruin.\u201d\n\nWhether Fiske was right or wrong the only pertinent point here is that\nDarwin was spared that necessity.\n\nTo his great task he brought a patience that is almost without\nparallel. One of his biographers, Grant Allen, tells us that: \u201cHis\nuncle and father-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, suggested to him that the\napparent sinking of stones on the surface might really be due to\nearthworm castings. So, as soon as he had some land of his own to\nexperiment upon, he began in 1842, to spread broken chalk over a field\nat Down, in which, twenty-nine years later in 1871, a trench was dug to\ntest the results. \u201cWhat other naturalist,\u201d asks Allen, ever waited so\nlong and so patiently to discover the upshot of a single experiment?\nIs it wonderful that a man who worked like that should succeed, not by\nfaith but by logical power, in removing mountains?\u201d\n\nDarwin studied domestic animals. He observed how many, and how widely\ndifferent, races there are of horses, dogs, swine, poultry in general\nand pigeons in particular. In each instance the many varieties are\nderived from an original common stock, as domestic fowls from the\nIndian jungle fowl, and pigeons from the old-world rock-dove.\n\n\u201cDerived,\u201d but how--by what process? In the case of domestic creatures\nthis was not difficult to answer. It is accomplished by breeders\n\u201cselecting\u201d the individuals to be bred from. In the case of pigeons,\nwhich Darwin laid particular stress on the fancier seemed to be able\nto obtain almost any kind of a bird by selecting as parents those\npigeons which had the desired characteristics developed to the most\npronounced degree, and then again selecting in the same way from their\nprogeny. In this way were produced birds so different from each other\nand their ancestors as the tumbler, the fantail, the pouter, and about\na hundred and fifty other varieties. The same with horses. If the\nbreeder desired draught horses, he selected for parents those animals\nwith massive shoulders and sturdy limbs. When a racer wins a \u201cclassic\u201d\nrace, it is at once sent to the stud-farm. Although in the zenith of\nits powers it races no more; it is \u201cselected\u201d for another and more\nimportant role--the reproduction and, it is hoped, the accentuation of\nthe characteristics which enabled it to outrun its competitors.\n\nAll this impressed on Darwin\u2019s mind the importance of the word\n\u201cselection,\u201d which appears in the title of his theory and the subtitle\nof his epoch-making book. Could it be possible that nature contained\nsome principle or combination of principles, which performed among\nwild animals a part analogous to that of the breeder, among domestic\nanimals? Darwin discovered that this is precisely what takes place.\nHis famous theory may be formulated under the three following heads:\n\n  (1) Heredity.\n\n  (2) Variation.\n\n  (3) The struggle for existence, with its resultant, survival of\n      the fittest.\n\nDarwin requires very little of heredity, and what he does ask is beyond\ndispute. It is enough for his theory if like begets like and \u201cfigs do\nnot grow on thistles.\u201d\n\nSimilarly with variation, the demands of his hypothesis are very\nslight. If it be conceded that variation is a fact, that offspring do\nvary from their parents and each other, it is enough. And who will\ndispute this in a world where no two creatures are exactly and in all\nparticulars alike? The apparent contradiction that, heredity demands\nlikeness, while variation requires difference, is confined to the\nsurface--it is not real. The likeness is general while the difference\nis particular. A sheep may be born with shorter or longer legs, by\nvariation; but it will be a sheep and not a horse, by heredity.\n\nAs an example of the working of the theory let us take Lamarck\u2019s piece\nde resistance, the giraffe. Lamarck says: \u201cWe know that this animal,\nthe tallest of mammals, inhabits the interior of Africa, and that it\nlives in localities where the earth, almost always arid and destitute\nof herbage, obliges it to browse on the foliage of trees and to make\ncontinual efforts to reach it. It has resulted from this habit,\nmaintained for a long period in all the individuals of its race, that\nits forelegs have become longer than the hinder ones, and that its neck\nis so elongated that the giraffe, without standing on its hind legs,\nraises its head and reaches six meters in height (almost twenty feet).\u201d\n\nLamarck thought this length of neck was acquired by \u201ccontinual efforts\nto reach,\u201d or, as Alfred Russell Wallace puts it in his criticism of\nLamarck--\u201cstretching.\u201d Many critics ventilated their wit on this theory\nof Lamarck\u2019s, under the impression that they were lampooning Darwin\u2019s\nidea.\n\nThey made a blunder similar to that of those critics of Utopian\nSocialism who labor under the pleasing delusion that they are riddling\nthe theories of Marx. Professor Ritchie has preserved a couple of\nstanzas by a witty Scotch judge who aimed his poem at Darwin, but hit\nLamarck.\n\n  \u201cA deer with a neck that was longer by half\n  Than the rest of his family, try not to laugh,\n  By stretching and stretching became a giraffe\n  Which nobody can deny.\n\n  That four-footed beast which we now call a whale,\n  Held his hind-legs so close that they grew to a tail,\n  Which he uses for threshing the sea, like a flail,\n  Which nobody can deny.\u201d\n\nBut Darwin\u2019s theory is altogether independent of the \u201cstretching\u201d idea.\nThe causes and origin of heredity and variation are up to this moment,\nalike wrapped in mystery. But when science succeeds in penetrating\nthose secrets, it is extremely unlikely that Darwin\u2019s theory will be\nseriously weakened, no matter what the causes may prove to be.\n\nNow about the giraffe. We will suppose, for the sake of illustration,\ntwo giraffes, a male and a female, whose necks are precisely five feet\nlong. We will confine our illustration to the question of the neck\nalone. We will suppose this particular pair to give birth to a family\nof three. First comes heredity. All we ask of heredity is that the\nyoung shall be giraffes, not camels or any other species; and this\nheredity guarantees. Now comes variation. As this is an ideal case for\nthe purpose of illustrating the theory, we will have one of the three\nshorter-necked than the parents, another the same length, while the\nthird has a longer neck--over five feet.\n\nNow comes the struggle for existence. When this family of giraffes is\nfairly grown and the new-comers are approaching breeding age--mark the\nimportance of this matter of \u201cbreeding age,\u201d for the problem is to find\nout how nature determines which shall be bred from--they are obliged\nto forage for themselves. There is no pasture to graze; they live\nin what is almost a desert. There are few shrubs; scarcely anything\nbut fairly high trees--from ten to twenty feet. If a giraffe breeder\nhad this matter in hand and he wished to increase the length of the\ngiraffe\u2019s neck, the problem would be simple. He would select number\nthree with the longest neck, pair it with the longest necked member of\nthe opposite sex in some other family and the trick would be done. But\nthis is in Central Africa, where there is no breeder to interfere, and\nthe question is: can nature accomplish the same result without his help?\n\nThis is what happens. First the leaves are eaten from all the lower\nbranches as they are reached with the least effort. Then they go higher\nand still higher until the point is reached where number one with the\nshortest neck cannot reach any further and the terrible struggle for\nexistence begins. Number two sees no danger as yet and number three has\nthings all his own way. But with short-necked number one, a tragedy has\nbegun. Every day now sees the food further out of his reach and even\nnumber two is obliged to reach out for his supply. The breeding time is\napproaching but the longer necked and therefore well-fed and vigourous\nfemales will have nothing to do with this wobbley starving creature,\nand the longer necked, well-fed males shun the short-necked starving\nfemales. If the starving ones mate, the mother dies before giving birth\nto offspring, or she cannot get nourishment enough to rear her progeny;\nin either case there is no effective succession. So the longer-necked\nare the fittest and they survive. Thus does nature \u201cselect\u201d one by the\nnegative process of destroying the rest, in about the same way as a man\n\u201cselects\u201d one puppy in a litter by drowning the rest.\n\nIn the case of the puppies we may say \u201cartificial selection;\u201d in the\ncase of the giraffe it is \u201cnatural selection.\u201d And this theory, simple\nas it may seem here, revolutionized Biology.\n\nIt is worthy of note that \u201cnatural\u201d selection has many advantages over\n\u201cartificial\u201d selection. The breeder may be mistaken; he may select\nthe wrong puppy and drown its superior. The horse that won the great\nrace may have had a fleeter-footed companion in the same stable had\nthe trainer known how to develop his possibilities. The gardener may\nhave passed the best root or stem through carelessness. But nature\nmakes no such mistakes, or if she does she eventually redeems them. Her\nmethod, while it is wholly fortuitous and unintelligent, is practically\ninfallible. The condition of survival is, adaptation to environment.\nThe very process of selection is, in itself, a sure test of fitness.\nTrue, moral considerations are eliminated--at least in the non-social\nworld--yet nature offers something like a fair field and no favors.\nWhen we speak of nature\u2019s favorites, we simply mean those who are best\nfitted to meet her hard conditions.\n\nTake a row of celery plants, from which future seedlings are to be\n\u201cselected.\u201d\n\nIn this instance, let us suppose, the quality desired is ability to\nresist frost. How is the gardener to know which of fifty plants are the\n\u201cbest\u201d in this respect. He has no method of finding out with any degree\nof certainty. But nature comes along some night with a sharp frost and\n\u201cselects\u201d ten by killing forty. And the very act of this \u201cnatural\u201d\nselection proves that these ten are better able to withstand the frost\nthan their fellows.\n\nBreeders of white sheep who supply the white wool market have a very\ntangible guide--they kill every lamb that shows the least tinge of\nblack. But even here, nature is not to be out-done. In Virginia there\nis--or at least was in Darwin\u2019s day--a wild hog of pure black. One\nof its staple foods was known as the \u201cpaint-root.\u201d Any hog with the\nleast speck of white on its body was poisoned by this root while its\nall-black brothers found it a health-sustaining and succulent food.\n\nIn an environment which remained constant and where a species of\nanimals had reached a population which strained the limits of\nsubsistence--food supply--those offspring which most closely resemble\ntheir parents, who had won out in that environment, would again succeed\nand be selected. While if the environment changed--became warmer or\ncolder for example--those descendants which happened to vary in a\ndirection making them better able to cope with the new conditions would\nbe selected for survival as against those who resembled their parents,\nwhich parents had survived in their day because they were adapted to\nthe prior environment.\n\nFor example, a country is well supplied with water and it is as a\nconsequence fertile and \u201cgreen.\u201d In such a country green insects and\ngreen reptiles will be selected, because a green background will render\nthem almost invisible to their enemies. Individuals of other colors\nwill make their appearance by variation, but they will be such plain\ntargets to their enemies, they will be devoured before they reach\nbreeding age and have a chance to reproduce the variation.\n\nBut suppose desiccation (drying up) sets in. The country loses\nits water supply, as Krapotkin has shown to have been the case in\nNorth-West Mongolia and East Turkestan, leading to the enforced exodus\nof the barbarians. Now green will disappear and brown or yellow--say\nbrown--takes its place. While this change will not, so far as we know,\ncause insects and lizards to breed brown instead of green, it will\nensure the survival or \u201cselection\u201d of such as are born brown and the\ndestruction of those who breed true to their green ancestors. Now every\natavistic return to green will be mercilessly weeded out, just as, when\nthe country was well-watered and green, every sporadic production of\nbrown was done to death.\n\nThis is the biological foundation of that environment philosophy which\nnow pervades all our thinking. Change the physical environment, says\nthe biologist, and the species will be transformed. Change the economic\nenvironment, says the Socialist, and, if you make the right change, the\nrace will be redeemed. Both statements rest on the same fundamental\nlaws.\n\nAs the many and highly important implications of this theory, are fully\ndealt with in subsequent lectures most of them will be passed here.\n\nWe may note however, that whenever any nation in the modern world,\nproduces, in the development of its industry, a Socialistic variation,\nthat new feature at once proves its utility and is \u201cselected\u201d in the\nDarwinian sense, because it constitutes an advantage over the previous\nform of social organization, in that particular. This is the reason\nwhy the trust--which is socialistic and revolutionary in its essential\ntendences--is always victorious, in spite of the foolish ravings of\nthe Hearst newspapers and the antediluvian twaddle of William Jennings\nBryan.\n\nBut Darwin\u2019s crowning achievement is that he made the general theory of\nevolution impregnable by thoroughly and conclusively demonstrating it\nin his own field as a naturalist. From then on it was only a question\nof time as to when its application would be universal.\n\nSocialism may be defined as the application of the theory of evolution\nto the phenomena of society. This is precisely what Marx and Engels\naccomplished, and this why their work is so fundamentally opposed to\nthe conventional theories and theological superstitious current in\ntheir time, and so fully in harmony with all the latest achievements in\nthe scientific world. History ceases to be a meaningless mass of war\nand famine, bloodshed and cruelty. It becomes a panorama presenting the\ndevelopment of society according to laws which may be understood and\nwith a future that may be measurably predicted.\n\nIt develops by the operation of forces that no man or class can wholly\nstay or hinder. The power of those forces and the direction in which\nthey are now making has been well set forth by Victor Hugo by a very\nstriking simile in the following passage:\n\n\u201cWe are in Russia. The Neva is frozen. Heavy carriages roll upon its\nsurface. They improvise a city. They lay out streets. They build\nhouses. They buy. They sell. They laugh. They dance. They permit\nthemselves anything. They even light fires on this water become\ngranite. There is winter, there is ice and they shall last forever. A\ngleam pale and wan spreads over the sky and one would say that the sun\nis dead. But no, thou art not dead, oh Liberty! At an hour when they\nhave most profoundly forgotten thee; at a moment when they least expect\nthee, thou shall arise, oh, dazzling sight! Thou shalt shoot thy bright\nand burning rays, thy heat, thy life, on all this mass of ice become\nhideous and dead. Do you hear that dull thud, that crackling, deep and\ndreadful? \u2019Tis the Neva tearing loose. You said it was granite. See it\nsplits like glass. \u2019Tis the breaking of the ice, I tell you. \u2019Tis the\nwater alive, joyous and terrible. Progress recommences. \u2019Tis humanity\nagain beginning its march. \u2019Tis the river which retakes its course,\nuproots, mangles, strikes together, crushes and drowns in its waves\nnot only the empire of upstart Czar Nicholas, but all of the relics\nof ancient and modern despotism. That trestle work floating away? It\nis the throne. That other trestle? It is the scaffold. That old book,\nhalf sunk? It is the old code of capitalist laws and morals. That old\nrookery just sinking? It is a tenement house in which wage slaves\nlived. See these all pass by; passing by never more to return; and for\nthis immense engulfing, for this supreme victory of life over death,\nwhat has been the power necessary? One of thy looks, oh, sun! One\nstroke of thy strong arm, oh, labor!\u201d\n\n\n\n\nIV.\n\nWEISMANN\u2019S THEORY OF HEREDITY.\n\n\nThe weak, untrained brain must have a conclusion. It cannot reserve\nits decision or render an open verdict. It is completely at sea in the\nscientific world where the most profound savant is often obliged to\nsay, \u201cI don\u2019t know.\u201d In a crowded courtroom, ninety per cent of the\nspectators have made up their minds that the prisoner is innocent or\nguilty before the first witness is called or a line of the evidence\nhas been read. He has a square jaw, or bushy eyebrows, or thick lips,\nor he shifts uneasily from one foot to the other, any or all which\nproves to the simpletons back of the rail, that he must be guilty no\nmatter what the crime is, or what the evidence may be. If he has blue\neyes and fair hair and mustache, or a pleasant manner, or pretty hands\nand the onlookers were to decide the matter, they would hardly convict\nhim on his own confession. In England, a judge is not placed on the\nbench because he \u201cstands in\u201d with a ward boss, but because of his wide\nscholarship and systematic training, and the reason advanced for this\nmethod is, that only a scientific scholar can reserve his opinion until\nall the evidence is in and then, if the case demands it, render an open\nverdict.\n\nWith the vexed problem of heredity, which has been so much to the fore\nin science for the last twenty-four years, while many great thinkers\nhave distinctly taken sides, it must be remembered that in many points\nof great importance, the only possible verdict on the contentions of\neither side, is one of \u201cnot proven.\u201d\n\nBut although this controversy has split the evolutionists into two\ncamps, it in no way compromises the evolution theory itself. The\ncontroversy is based on the admission of all the parties to it,\nthat evolution is granted, and the question at issue involves only\na difference as to how the acknowledged results are accomplished.\nEvolution is no longer merely a theory, it is an established fact, and\nis recognized as such by all who live in an intellectual atmosphere\nbelonging to this side of 1859, the year of the publication of the\n\u201cOrigin of Species.\u201d\n\nNeither does the result of this discussion threaten, in any way, the\nvalidity of the Darwinian theory of \u201cNatural Selection.\u201d All the\ndisputants are avowed Darwinians, and disagree only as to whether\nDarwin\u2019s theory is alone sufficient to account for the origin of new\nspecies.\n\nProfessor Packard, Lamarck\u2019s biographer, and one of his warmest\nadmirers, at the close of his chapter devoted to the denial of \u201cpure\u201d\nDarwinism says: \u201cWe must never forget or under-estimate, however,\nthe inestimable value of the services rendered by Darwin, who by his\npatience, industry, and rare genius for observation and experiment,\nand his powers of lucid exposition, convinced the world of the truth\nof evolution, with the result that it has transformed the philosophy\nof our day. We are all evolutionists, though we may differ as to the\nnature of the efficient causes.\u201d\n\nThere are now three possible positions. (1) That of the Lamarckians,\npure and simple, who maintain that Lamarck\u2019s theory in itself explains\nall the phenomena, and that Darwin\u2019s principle of selection is not\nonly invalid but superfluous. This school is practically extinct,\nthough Packard often sails to its very edge in his efforts to\ndefend his subject, as is the manner of biographers. (2) The Neo-\n(New)- Lamarckians who develop Lamarck\u2019s theory and add to it Darwin\u2019s\nselective principle as of greater, equal, or secondary importance,\naccording as they lean the more strongly to Darwin or Lamarck. This\nposition held the field almost alone, until Weismann fired his opening\ngun in 1883. He founded (3) the Neo-Darwinian school which repudiates\naltogether the Lamarckian factor of the hereditary transmission of\nacquired characters, and maintains that Darwin\u2019s theory is able to\ndispense with Lamarckian ideas of use and disuse.\n\nAs Weismann is the storm center of the controversy we will now examine\nhis theory.\n\nIn 1883 Weismann became the pro-Rector of the University of Freiburg\nand in the hall of the University, in June of that year, he publicly\ndelivered his inaugural lecture \u201cOn Heredity.\u201d This lecture is\ngenerally regarded as the first broadside in that war which filled\nwith its reverberations the scientific magazines of the world for the\nnext thirteen years. As one writer aptly says, \u201cThe warring scientists\nsplashed like irate cuttle-fishes in clouds of their own ink.\u201d About\n1896 however, the public grew tired of the never-ending flood of\nbiological lore on what looked to the lay mind like an insoluble\nproblem. The editors, with their fingers on the public pulse, cried,\n\u201cA plague on both your houses,\u201d and sent the savants to seek in their\nlaboratories the victories denied to their pens.\n\nAs a matter of fact however, the coming struggle was foreshadowed in a\npaper read by Weismann at the meeting of the Association of the German\nNaturalists at Salzburg, two years earlier, in 1881.\n\nThis paper was entitled \u201cThe Duration of Life,\u201d and the subject was\nstill further developed in an academic lecture, in 1883, on \u201cLife and\nDeath.\u201d These two biological contributions not only indicated the\nfoundations of Weismann\u2019s theory, but they threw a very brilliant light\nin certain very dark places. Weismann not only took up, but he solved\nthe hitherto obscure question of the origin of death.\n\nJohannes Muller had, as early as 1840, rejected the prevailing\nhypothesis which held the death of animals to be due to \u201cthe influences\nof the organic environment, which gradually wear away the life of\nthe individual.\u201d Muller argued that if this were so \u201cthe organic\nenergy of an individual would steadily decrease from the beginning.\u201d\nEverybody knows, however, that in spite of the wear and tear caused\nby the \u201cenvironment,\u201d be it organic or inorganic, the volume of life\nincreases, until a certain stage is reached in all animals. But Muller\nhad failed to fill the gap his criticism had created.\n\nThis problem Weismann solved by analysing the methods of reproduction\namong animals. These generally speaking are two; sexual, and non-sexual\nor, as it is sometimes termed, a-sexual. This latter form is the mode\nthat prevails at the bottom of the organic scale--among the protozoa,\nanimals consisting of a single cell. This method has a variety of forms\nwhich are classified by Haeckel as (1) self-division; (2) formation of\nbuds; (3) the formation of germ-cells or spores. We shall here deal\nonly with the first, self-division, or fission, which is the most\nuniversal of all methods of propagation, being the progress by which\nthe individual cells which compose all the higher animals multiply\nthemselves. This is the method vital to Weismann\u2019s theory and the other\ntwo are no more than distinct modifications of fission.\n\nWhen a Moneron or an Amoeba reaches a certain size, it begins to pinch\nin the middle like a tightly-laced corset. This increases until the\ncreature divides into two equal halves. Each of these halves becomes a\ncomplete individual which continues to thrive until the next division\ntakes place.\n\nWhat Weismann observed as the most significant thing about this was\nthat in this process and among these unicellular (single celled)\norganisms there is no such thing as natural death. Accidental death\nis wholesale in its proportions, but no Moneron ever dies of old age.\nAstounding as it may seem to the layman, the race-old, world-wide idea\nthat death is \u201cessential to the very nature of life itself\u201d is here\ntotally and indisputably overthrown.\n\n\u201cI pointed out,\u201d says Weismann, in the second lecture and referring to\nthe first \u201cthat we could not speak of natural death among unicellular\nanimals, for their growth has no termination which is comparable with\ndeath. The origin of new individuals is not connected with the death of\nthe old; but increase by division takes place in such a way that the\ntwo parts into which an organism separates are exactly equivalent to\none another, and neither of them is older or younger than the other.\nIn this way countless numbers of individuals arise, each of which is\nas old as the species itself, while each possesses the capability of\nliving on indefinitely, by means of divisions.\u201d\n\nAmong the Metazoa, i. e., multicellular or many celled animals, this\nimmortality of the individual disappears. \u201cHere, also,\u201d says Weismann,\n\u201creproduction takes place by means of cell-division, but every cell\ndoes not possess the power of reproducing the whole organism. The\ncells of the organism are differentiated into two essentially different\ngroups, the reproductive cells--ova or spermatozoa--and the somatic\ncells, or cells of the body. The immortality of the unicellular\norganism has passed over to the former--the reproductive cells--the\nothers must die, and since the body of the individual is chiefly\ncomposed of them, it must die also.\u201d\n\nAnd so death came into the world, not by sin, as the Genesis legend\nreports, but through sex; a most astonishing conclusion, it may be,\nbut one from which there is apparently no escape. Immortality still\nremains, it is true, but it is not the immortality of the conscious\nself. Positive science, nothwithstanding all its glorious gifts,\nhas dealt a terrible blow to those gorgeous dreams of primitive men\nand modern mystics; those hopes and longings which have sustained\nmillions of our race in hours of supreme sorrow; a blow which not\neven the bravest has been able to receive without flinching. The\nonly immortality of which science has any surety is that of these\nunconscious single cells, which make possible the reproduction of the\nspecies.\n\nWeismann, then, divides the cells which compose the bodies of the\nhigher animals, including man, into two distinct kinds; the somatic,\nor body cells and the germ, or reproductive cells. These germ cells\nare, so to speak, batteries in which are stored a substance which\nWeismann calls germ-plasm. A minutely small portion of this germ-plasm\nfrom an individual of one sex, mixed with a similar portion from an\nindividual of the other will produce a new individual. But--and here\ncomes the keystone of Weismann\u2019s arch--only a portion of the mixed\ngerm-plasm is used up in the composition of the new individual; the\nrest is stored away in the germ-cells of the new individual for further\nreproduction when the time arrives. The only relation that this\nreserved germ-plasm has with the body cells of the new individual is\nthat it is provided by them with room and board.\n\nThus, according to Weismann, from generation to generation, there is\nan unbroken stream of germ-plasm, and this constitutes his celebrated\ntheory of \u201cThe Continuity of Germ-Plasm.\u201d Granted this theory as a\npremise, and Weismann\u2019s conclusions cannot be gainsaid. This germ-plasm\nbeing the sole \u201ccarrier of heredity,\u201d nothing that happens to the\nsomatic or body cells can be transmitted to the progeny.\n\nDarwin had put forward a theory of heredity which he called\n\u201cPangenesis,\u201d which made out a good case for the admission of the\nLamarckian factor. According to this theory all the somatic or body\ncells give forth still smaller cells which he calls \u201cgemmules.\u201d\nThese gemmules are collected, by some process not explained, in the\nreproductive organs. Here they are in packets, and these \u201cpackets of\ngemmules\u201d are \u201cthe carriers of heredity.\u201d One can easily see how by\nthis process the effects of use and disuse would be transmissible\nfor an organ shrunk by disuse would not be capably represented by an\nefficient delegation of gemmules at the reproductive headquarters.\n\nSpeaking of this theory, Grant Allen in his biography of Darwin says,\n\u201cLet not the love of the biographer deceive us. Not to mince matters,\nit was his one conspicuous failure, and is now pretty universally\nadmitted as such.\u201d It must be remembered however, that Darwin was fully\naware of its purely speculative character and with his usual caution\nentitled it the \u201cProvisional Hypothesis of Pangenesis.\u201d\n\nRomanes, one of Weismann\u2019s ablest critics, compares Weismann\u2019s theory\nwith Darwin\u2019s, and while he refuses to defend Pangenesis against\nWeismann\u2019s charge that it is a wholly unsupported speculation, he\nreplies by contending that the germ-plasm theory lives in precisely the\nsame kind of a glass house.\n\nHowever that may be, it is quite clear that the germ-plasm theory\ncompletely shuts out the Lamarckian factor of evolution in all cases\nwhere propagation is sexual.\n\n\u201cBut,\u201d say the Neo-Lamarckians, \u201cDarwinism in itself, merely assumes\nvariations without attempting to explain their origin. Natural\nselection only explains the survival of the fittest; it tells us\nnothing of what Prof. Cope calls the \u2018Origin of the Fittest.\u2019 There\nmust be variation before selection, whence then, comes this variation?\u201d\nTo this question Weismann has a ready reply. \u201cVariation is due to the\nblending of two wholly different kinds of germ-plasm at conception,\nproducing at birth a result that is not, and cannot be, wholly like the\ncontributor of either.\u201d\n\nAnd now, at last, the great German is in a corner. If all variations\nare due to congenital characters only, and these, of course, are only\npossible because of the combinations secured by sexual reproduction,\nhow do variations arise among non-sexual organisms where such\ncombinations cannot exist?\n\nThis is indeed, a poser. But any rejoicing by Weismann\u2019s opponents is\nquite premature. The sagacity which set those opponents by the ears is\nstill available. There is no attempt to untie that knot; Weismann cuts\nit with a knife. He empties his antagonist\u2019s sails by a smiling and\ngracious surrender. Below the sexually reproducing animals, he concedes\nthe operation of the Lamarckian factor. In that unicellular world it\nis not a special cell that is passed on but the individual itself is\ncontinued, and of course any character acquired by the individual will\nbe preserved along with the individual.\n\nThus then the region of controversy is limited to sexually reproducing\norganisms and we come to the field where the fiercest fight was\nmade. Do these organisms transmit by heredity those characters or\npeculiarities acquired by the individual during its own life-time? To\nthis question the Neo-Lamarckians gave a positive affirmative, which\nWeismann met with an unwavering denial.\n\nWeismann challenged his opponents to produce a single demonstration of\nsuch a transmission. Here let us be clear as to what is meant by an\nacquired character. For illustration, let us suppose a father leaves\nhis son an estate of a thousand acres. That is inheritance. If the son\nleaves his son the same one thousand acres, that is still inheritance.\nBut if that son increases the estate, during his life-time to two\nthousand, the second thousand is an \u201cacquired character\u201d of a property\nnature. There the analogy ceases for there is no dispute as to his\nability to transmit both thousands to his heirs by inheritance.\n\nBut with \u201cacquired characters\u201d of a biological nature, Weismann\nmaintains this to be impossible. Many specific instances were put\nforward in refutation of this contention. Herbert Spencer cited the\ncase of the supposed degeneration of the little toe in civilized man as\na result of the shoe wearing habit. This it was urged could only have\noccurred through the transmission of acquired characters and not by\nnatural selection as this diminished toe could not be of any value in\nthe struggle for existence.\n\nBut it was shown by measuring the feet of savages, who do not wear\nshoes, and whose ancestors never wore them, that the small toes of\nsavages had degenerated quite as much.\n\nThen Cesare Lombroso entered the arena leading a camel. According to\nthe Italian criminologist, the camel\u2019s hump had been first acquired by\nbearing loads and then transmitted by heredity. From the fact that the\ncamel and the llama, which is smooth backed, have something in common,\nhe concludes that camels are really llamas that have recently acquired\na hump in the performance of their labors. Lombroso also supported his\nhump theory by some statements about Hottentot women having developed\ncallouses on their hips by carrying their children on their backs.\nUnfortunately all Lombroso\u2019s ingenuity was wasted for we happen to\npossess the geological record of the camel in good condition, and from\nthis history we know that the \u201cship of the desert\u201d had his hump before\nthe human race appeared when according to Lombroso he should have been\na smooth-backed llama. Disappointed as Weismann\u2019s critics were it was\nhardly feasible to argue that the camel had gotten his hump in those\nearly times by placing loads on his own back.\n\nIt was clearly seen that if a case of the transmission of a mutilation\ncould be established, Weismann\u2019s theory would be thereby demolished. A\nremarkable attempt was made in this direction in 1887 at the meeting\nof the Association of the German Naturalists at Wiesbaden. To that\ndignified gathering came Dr. Zacharias with a number of tailless\ncats. It was asserted that these cats had no tails because their\nmother had lost her tail through having it run over by a cart wheel.\nThe examination of these specimens proved an entertaining diversion\nfrom the regular proceedings, and Prof. Eimer took them seriously\nenough to refer to them in a later work as \u201ca valuable instance of the\ntransmission of mutilations.\u201d\n\nWeismann, however, refused to be put down. He insisted that in the\nabsence of absolute certainty as to the cart wheel incident, they\ndid not fulfill the first condition of scientific evidence, and Dr.\nZacharias wisely admitted later, that this point was well taken.\nProf. Poulton had described certain cats with extra toes which he had\nkept under surveillance for seven generations. \u201cIt would be equally\njustifiable,\u201d says Weismann, \u201cto derive cats with extra toes from an\nancestor whose toes had been trodden on, as to derive the tailless cats\nof the Isle of Man from an ancestor of which the tail had been cut off\nby a cart passing over it, and thus to regard the existence of the race\nas a proof of the transmission of mutilations.\u201d\n\nAgain Weismann points out that the absence of a tail may not be owing\nto the mutilation of the mother but to the inherent taillessness of\nan unknown father. He proceeds to relate how during the year that Dr.\nZacharias came with his collection, \u201cMy friend, Prof. Schottlius\nbrought me a kitten with an innate rudimentary tail, which he had\naccidentally discovered as one of a family of kittens at Waldkirch,\na small town in the southern part of the Black Forest. A closer\ninvestigation resulted in the following rather unexpected discovery.\nFor some time past, tailless kittens have frequently appeared in the\nfamilies of many different mother cats at Waldkirch, and this fact is\nexplained in the following manner. A clergyman, who lived for some time\nat Waldkirch had married an English lady who possessed a tailless male\nManx cat. The probability that all the tailless cats in Waldkirch are\nmore or less distant descendants of that male cat amounts almost to\ncertainty. Since a male Manx cat has reached the Black Forest, it might\nequally well arrive at some other place.\u201d\n\nThis very same year a popular scientific journal came to the rescue of\nthe transmission theory with the following incident purporting to have\ntaken place 22 years before, in 1864. \u201cA pregnant merino sheep broke\nits right foreleg about two inches above the knee-joint; the limb was\nput in splints and healed a long time before the following March, when\nthe animal produced young. The lamb possessed a ring of black wool from\ntwo to three inches in breadth round the place at which the mother\u2019s\nleg had been broken, and upon the same leg.\u201d When this incident was\nrelated to Weismann, he replied, \u201cIt is a pity that the black wool\nwas not arranged in the form of the inscription \u2018to the memory of the\nfractured leg of my dear mother.\u2019\u201d\n\nWriting in the following year Weismann says, \u201cFurthermore, the\nmutilations of certain parts of the human body, as practised by\ndifferent nations from time immemorial, have not in a single instance,\nled to the malformation or reduction of the parts in question. Such\nhereditary effects have been produced neither by circumcision nor the\nremoval of the front teeth, nor the boring of holes in the lips or\nnose, nor the extraordinary artificial crushing and crippling of the\nfeet of Chinese women. No child among any of the nations referred to\npossesses the slightest trace of these mutilations when born; they have\nto be acquired anew in each generation.\u201d\n\nWhile it is undoubtedly true that much in Weismann\u2019s position lacks\nexperimental demonstration, it is equally true that when the heat\nof the discussion somewhat subsided, his theories were well to the\nfore, and they have since secured a wide acceptance among competent\nauthorities. It is hardly to be expected that his two greatest\ncritics, Spencer and Haeckel, would look with much favor on a theory\nthe acceptance of which would make necessary the re-writing of those\nmany volumes which constitute their lifework. Lankester, himself no\nmean authority, in translating Haeckel\u2019s \u201cHistory of Creation,\u201d feels\nconstrained to say in the preface, \u201cI feel it due to myself to state\nthat I do not agree with him as to a very large part of his views on\nclassification, and as to his belief in the necessity of assuming the\n\u2018transmissibility of acquired characters.\u2019 Readers who have gained an\ninterest in these questions from the brief statements of the present\nwork must, without assuming that Professor Haeckel\u2019s judgment is final,\ngo on to study for themselves the works of Weismann and others which\nare mentioned with perfect fairness in these pages.\u201d\n\nAnd Joseph McCabe, the translator of his \u201cRiddle of the Universe,\u201d and\n\u201cLast Words on Evolution,\u201d has this to say in his introduction to the\nlatter, written two years ago, \u201cTo closer students, who are at times\nimpatient of the Lamarckian phraseology of Haeckel--to all, in fact,\nwho would like to see how the same evolutionary truths are expressed\nwithout reliance on the inheritance of acquired characters,--I may\ntake the opportunity to say that I have translated for the same\npublishers, Professor Guenther\u2019s \u201cDarwinism and the Problems of Life,\u201d\nwhich will shortly be in their hands.\u201d\n\nIt must be admitted that the older view is much less favorable to the\nSocialist position in sociology than the later theory of Weismann. It\nis a matter of some satisfaction that so great a critic as Romanes\nconcedes the feasibility of Weismann\u2019s theory while rejecting some of\nthe conclusions which he draws from it. \u201cIf Weismann\u2019s theory is true,\u201d\nsays Prof. David Starr-Jordan, \u201cthe whole literature of sociology will\nhave to be rewritten!\u201d And another writer insisted that Weismann had\nreopened the case for Socialism.\n\nIf it were true that the terrible results of the degrading conditions\nforced upon the dwellers in the slums were transmitted to their\nchildren by heredity, until in a few generations they became fixed\ncharacters, the hopes of Socialists for a regenerated society would\nbe much more difficult to realize. In that case these unfortunate\ncreatures would continue to act in the same discouraging way for\nseveral generations, no matter how their environment had been\ntransformed by the corporate action of society. This much at any rate,\nWeismann has done for us, he has scientifically destroyed that lie.\n\nIn this respect, independent sociological experiments and\ninvestigations have arrived at the same conclusions as Weismann. Prof.\nJohn R. Commons by careful study, reached the following conclusions:\nThat 1.75 per cent of the population of the United States are\ncongenital defectives; that 3.25 per cent are induced defectives,\nthat is, they have not inherited their deficiency; that 2 per cent\nare possessed of genius and will make their way under the hardest\nconditions; that 2 per cent are below the Aryan brain level; and that\nthe remaining 91 per cent are normal persons who are neither good nor\nbad, brilliant nor stupid, criminal nor virtuous, and whose future is\nentirely decided by the environment which surrounds them during the\nfirst fifteen years of their life.\n\nHerman Whittaker, a magazine contributor, states that during eight\nyears in Canada 2,000 boys taken from the London slums by Dr. Barnado\npassed under his observation on a farm colony. And although most of\nthem had served terms in jail, not more than one per cent reverted to\ntheir own former habits, or the habits of their parents.\n\nWhen it is charged that a transformed social environment will not\nsolve the problem presented by the slum, the sweatshop and the jail, as\nSocialists assert, we are justified in nailing the statement as false,\nand a libel on human nature. And in so doing, we are not sentimental\ndreamers of dreams, crying for the moon, but rigid analysts and\ninvestigators, and, as Lassalle once proudly said, \u201cWe have behind us\nthe science and the learning of our day.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nV.\n\nDE VRIES\u2019 \u201cMUTATION.\u201d\n\n\nOrthodoxy received the most stunning blow ever given it, at the hands\nof Charles Darwin, and it is ever on the lookout for an opportunity to\nmake reprisals. It is only necessary for some fledgling to challenge\nDarwin\u2019s theory of the origin of coral reefs and offer some grotesque\nassumption in its place, and it is at once announced from a thousand\npulpits that Darwinism,--that enemy of God and man--is dead.\n\nHugo DeVries, however, could hardly be called a fledgling, and the\nsupporters of Darwin had real cause for apprehension, it would seem,\nwhen the rumor gained ground that no less a person than the Amsterdam\nprofessor had overthrown Darwin\u2019s theory, and substituted one of his\nown.\n\nAlas, this latest \u201cdeath of Darwinism\u201d was no more fatal than its\nnumerous predecessors, as the following quotation from DeVries himself\nwill show:\n\n\u201cMy work claims to be in full accord with the principles laid down\nby Darwin.\u201d And again, \u201cTo Darwin was reserved the task of bringing\nthe theory of common descent to its present high rank in scientific\nand social philosophy.\u201d And, \u201cNotwithstanding all these apparently\nunsurmountable difficulties, (absence of experimental evidence since\ngathered) Darwin discovered the great principle which rules the\nevolution of organisms. It is the principle of natural selection. It is\nthe sifting out of all organisms of minor worth through the struggle\nfor life.\u201d\n\nThe greater part of the adverse criticism, aimed at Darwinism applies\nonly to the extravagant claims put forward by his overenthusiastic\ndisciples; claims not to be found in the works of Darwin himself. As we\nshall see later, one of the greatest offenders in this respect was no\nless a person than the co-discoverer of the selection theory--Alfred\nRussell Wallace.\n\nOf all the mischievous misconceptions of Darwin\u2019s theory none have\nworked so much harm as that which regards natural selection as the\nactive and efficient cause of evolution. Although evolution is an\nestablished fact, our knowledge of its processes are incomplete and\nmust always remain so until we have solved that most vexed of all\nbiological problems, the \u201ccauses of variation.\u201d\n\nAs to the nature of these causes, natural selection is dumb. For\nits purpose, variation is simply assumed to be a fact, and Darwin\u2019s\nacknowledged ignorance as to how variation is brought about is\nexpressed in the term \u201cspontaneous variation.\u201d Until variation has\nplayed its part by producing new and various forms, selection has no\nfunction or office to perform. Then it simply decides which forms shall\nsurvive by destroying the rest. As Wigand has pointed out, selection\ndoes not do more than determine the survival of what is offered to it,\nand does not create anything new. As DeVries very strikingly puts it,\n\u201cIt is only a sieve, and not a force of nature, no direct cause of\nimprovement, as many of Darwin\u2019s adversaries, and unfortunately many of\nhis followers also, have so often asserted. It is only a sieve which\ndecides which is to live and which is to die.... With the single steps\nof evolution it has nothing to do. Only after the step has been taken,\nthe sieve acts, eliminating the unfit.\u201d Thus Prof. Cope\u2019s point that\nDarwin\u2019s theory does not explain the \u201corigin\u201d of the fittest, is well\ntaken, or as Mr. Arthur Harris puts it, \u201cNatural selection may explain\nthe survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the\nfittest.\u201d\n\nIt was around this question of the \u201ccauses\u201d of variation that the\nNeo-Lamarckians and the Weismannians fought their battle, the former\ninsisting, as we have seen, that variation was caused by the hereditary\ntransmission of acquired characters, while Weismann maintained that\nvariation arose solely through the combining of two portions of\ndiffering germ-plasm contributed by two different individuals, and\nproducing a new individual unlike either,--a \u201cvariation\u201d from both.\nWhile whatever there was of victory fell to Weismann, neither side has\nexperimentally proven its case, and we are still in the dark as to the\n\u201ccauses of variation.\u201d Our ignorance is still cloaked in the convenient\nword \u201cspontaneous;\u201d to Darwin\u2019s \u201cspontaneous variation\u201d we now add\nDeVries\u2019 \u201cspontaneous mutation.\u201d\n\nIt is another tribute to Darwin\u2019s caution and insight that he\nrecognized the possibility of variations arising either suddenly, as\nDeVries asserts they do, or gradually as DeVries denies.\n\nNot only did Alfred Russell Wallace seek to limit the operation of\nnatural selection in certain fields, in order to make room for his\nspiritualist theories--an adventure which failed dismally--but he\ndenied the sudden appearance of new species or sub-species, thereby\nrestricting Darwinism, as he understood it, to the origin of new\nspecies by the gradual accumulation of those almost imperceptible\nvariations usually described as \u201cfluctuations.\u201d Whatever conflict there\nmay be between Darwinism and mutation must be ascribed to Wallace. As\nDeVries clearly recognizes, Darwin is in no way responsible. \u201cDarwin,\u201d\nsays DeVries, \u201crecognized both lines of evolution.\u201d\n\nThe difference between \u201cfluctuations\u201d and \u201cmutation\u201d is illustrated by\nDeVries recalling Galton\u2019s simile of a polyhedron--an example of which\nis a solid piece of glass covered with many small flat faces. When it\ncomes to rest on any particular face, it is in stable equilibrium.\nSmall disturbances may make it oscillate, but it returns always to\nthe same face. These oscillations are like fluctuating variations.\nA greater disturbance may cause the polyhedron to roll over on to a\nnew face, where it comes to rest again, only showing the ever present\nfluctuations around the new center. The new position corresponds to\na mutation. One of the disabilities of this illustration is that\nsome fluctuations represent a greater disturbance from the given\nposition than some mutations. The essential difference is that in the\nfluctuation it rocks back again while in the mutation it remains on a\nnew base.\n\nEverybody has heard something of the famous evening primrose which\ngave DeVries his first and most conclusive evidence of mutation. At\nHilversum near Amsterdam, he discovered a large number of the plants\nof the evening primrose, named Lamarckiana after Lamarck. It is an\nAmerican plant imported to Europe. It often escapes from cultivation\nand in this case DeVries says it had escaped from a park. It had run\nwild ten years. A year after first noticing them DeVries observed two\nnew forms which he at once recognized as two new elementary species.\n\nIn the test conditions of his own garden, in an experiment covering\nthirteen years, he observed over fifty thousand of the Lamarckiana\nspread over eight generations and of these eight hundred were mutations\ndivided among seven new elementary species. These mutations, when\nself-fertilized, or fertilized from plants like themselves, bred true\nto themselves, thus answering the test of a real species. DeVries also\nwatched the field from which his original forms were taken, and saw\nthat similar mutations occurred there so that they were not in any way\ndue to cultivation.\n\nThus has the modest mutating primrose contributed its quota to the\nsolution of that riddle of the universe which, until it is solved, will\nalways command a paramount position in the thoughts of men.\n\nDeVries discourages the notion that mutations are always occurring\neverywhere, which might seem to be one of the inferences from his\ntheory, and his twenty-fourth lecture of the series, delivered before\nthe University of California is entitled \u201cThe Hypothesis of Periodic\nMutations.\u201d The common primrose, he says, seems to be immutable at\npresent, and argues that it must have had a mutatory period sometime\nin the past, when, perhaps, the evening primrose was not mutating. He\nsays: \u201cAll the facts point to the conclusion that these periods, of\nstability and mutability, alternate more or less regularly with one\nanother.\u201d\n\nHe deals the Neo-Lamarckians a heavy blow by his denial of \u201cdirect\u201d\nadaptation, and he greatly strengthens their opponents when he asserts\nthat mutation takes place, not only in useful directions, but in all\ndirections, leaving natural selection to destroy the unfit. This\nis a restatement of Darwin\u2019s conception, followed by Weismann, of\n\u201cfortuitous\u201d variations, and is contrary to the notion of Spencer and\nHaeckel, that variations are mainly in the direction of adaptation\nto environment, as a result of animals exerting themselves in that\ndirection.\n\nThis point is well stated by DeVries in the following passage,--\u201cThis\nfailure of a large part of the productions of nature deserves to be\nconsidered at some length. It may be elevated to a principle, and\nmay be made use of to explain many difficult points of the theory of\ndescent. If in order to secure one good novelty nature must produce ten\nor twenty or perhaps more bad ones at the same time, the possibility\nof improvements coming by pure chance must be granted at once. All\nhypotheses concerning the direct causes of adaptation at once become\nsuperfluous, and the great principle enunciated by Darwin once more\nreigns supreme.\u201d\n\nAnother difficulty which DeVries claims to have solved by his theory,\nis the supposed contradiction between the physicist and the biologist\nas to the time allowed by the former and the time required by the\nlatter, for the evolution of animals.\n\nLord Kelvin asserted the age of the earth to be between twenty and\nforty million years. George Darwin estimates the separation of the\nmoon from the earth as having taken place some fifty-six million years\nago. Gekie estimated the existence of the solid crust of the earth\nas at most hundred million years. Joly, by calculating the amount of\ndissolved salts, and Dubois by the amount of lime, estimated the age of\nthe rivers, Joly giving as probable fifty-five and Dubois thirty-six\nmillions of years.\n\n\u201cAll in all,\u201d concludes DeVries, \u201cit seems evident that the duration of\nlife does not comply with the demands of the conception of very slow\nand continuous evolution.\u201d Mutation, with its sudden leaps, has no such\ndifficulty, and,--\u201cThe demands of the biologists and the results of the\nphysicists are harmonized on the ground of the theory of mutation.\u201d\n\nIn order properly to estimate the sociological significance of DeVries\u2019\ntheory it will be necessary to go back more than a century, and observe\nthe sociological import of the leading biological ideas of that period.\n\nAnd here let us remark, that nobody knows better than we do the\ndanger of transplanting, without criticism, biological theories into\nthe field of sociology. Nevertheless, our opponents have never lost\nan opportunity to twist and distort science, if perchance by any\npossibility it could be made to contradict anything that had so much as\nthe semblance of Socialism. We, however, have always insisted on the\nweakness of reasoning by mere analogy and have kept to those general\nlaws which have been worked out separately in sociology.\n\nThe principle now about to be applied belongs to this latter class.\nIt is the most luminous principle ever employed in the interpretation\nof the phenomena of society. This principle is that the intellectual\nlife of a people is determined by its mode of wealth production and the\nsocial classes arising therefrom.\n\nJean Lamarck, the first great modern apostle of evolution, died in\npoverty because he advocated a theory that appeared to contradict the\ninterests of the ruling class of his time. He had against him all that\nsurvived of feudal interests, which was intensely theological, and\nalthough his theory really favored the bourgeoisie, that class was not\nyet aware of it.\n\nCuvier was the lion of that day, for he managed the remarkable feat of\nadapting science to the ideas, not only of the increasing bourgeoisie,\nbut also of the diminishing feudal power. He pleased the feudal\nregime, such of it as remained, by denying evolution, and endorsing\nits theology. This made his theories welcome also among those shrewd\nearly capitalists, as the English, who realized more quickly than their\nfellows, that religious belief might constitute as great a prop for\none ruling class at it had already been for another.\n\nBut in his capacity of scientific reflection of the class interest\nof his masters, Cuvier\u2019s masterpiece was his \u201ccataclysmic theory.\u201d\nAccording to this theory, organisms were not the result of evolution,\nbut they were now just as when they issued from the hands of the\nCreator. The difference between existing forms, and those creatures\nwhose story is preserved in the rocks, was explained by a series of\ncataclysms or catastrophes by which, at certain widely separated\nperiods, all living forms were destroyed, and a completely new stock\nwas created to take their places.\n\nIt would be impossible to conceive a better scientific justification\nof the French revolution than Cuvier\u2019s theory presented. For many\ndecades before that event these rising commercialists had groaned under\nthe yoke of feudal dues and feudal restraints of trade. Nothing could\nbe more to their wishes than a sudden social \u201ccataclysm\u201d that would\ndestroy the feudal system with its trade despising and plundering\nnobility, and exalt its own trading class to fill the vacancy. And when\nthis had been accomplished, and that same nobility had been sent to the\nguillotine, it was great consolation to have on Cuvier\u2019s authority,\nthat this method of sudden violence had no less a precedent than the\nmethods of the Almighty in suddenly destroying the living things in his\nown universe.\n\nCuvier\u2019s theory however, almost died with him, for the violent desires\nof the bourgeoisie were short lived. When it realized the completeness\nof its own victory, and that the next \u201ccataclysm\u201d would mean its own\noverthrow and the enthronement of some successor, cataclysms lost favor\nand were frowned down. Preachers of sudden and violent changes were now\nregarded as the enemies of society, and Cuvier\u2019s once lauded theory\nof cataclysms was sneered at as a relic of the dark ages. What the\ncapitalist class wanted now was peace, and long life, and above all, no\ndisturbances.\n\nAnd it was just at this point that Darwin came forward with a theory\nthat seemed made to order. True this theory spoke of evolution and\nchange, but the change was so slow it was impossible to notice it. A\nmillion years was as ten minutes to this theory, and if it took as long\nfor one class in society to displace another, or for one social regime\nto succeed another, as it does for one species to develop from another,\nthe capitalists and their heirs had nothing to apprehend for a thousand\ngenerations.\n\nThere was nothing sudden about this theory, quite the contrary. In fact\nthe real difficulty was to see how anything managed to change at all.\n\nAs for that part of it which spoke of the survival of the fittest,\nwhat could be clearer than that these self-made men were themselves\nthe fittest. It was, of course equally clear that the degraded working\nclass, lacking the cleverness to rise, was destined to be eliminated as\nunfit, by the laws of nature.\n\nFor half a century this argument of slow evolution has done valiant\nservice as an antidote for Socialism, and the present ruling class\nwould like to retain it forever.\n\nBut no ruling class ever was or ever can be wholly omnipotent. The\ncapitalists of to-day can no more hinder the process of social\nevolution, with its resulting march of ideas, than they can intercept\ngravitation or divert the tides. They are being driven blindly to their\nfate by social forces which are beyond their command.\n\nThey are in the midst of social powers which mock their puny efforts\nto administer. Contradictions arise which cannot continue. As soon as\na capitalist country is over-stocked with wealth, poverty prepares to\nstalk abroad.\n\nBut amid all this confusion, something moves on, a something which\nwe sometimes call the spirit of the age. Society grows restless\nand instinctively anticipates a coming change. A new class rises\ninto prominence and begins to realize its strength and develop its\nintelligence.\n\nThe ruling class still proclaims its will, but cannot always execute\nit. Colorado, Idaho, and Haywood are proof of that. The mental\ndevelopment of this new class has reached the point where it has become\nan intellectual factor in the national life. Its voice is listened to\nby publishers of books. It establishes its own press. It publishes a\nliterature of its own. It creates its own platform. It reaches into the\nfuture and demands control of its own destiny.\n\nAnd now see how all this is reflected in the scientific world. It is no\nlonger true that species require thousands of years for the simplest\nchange. We are now informed that change takes place by sudden leaps. At\none single step a new species appears and begins its existence. There\nis therefore, no longer anything in biological science to contradict\nthe Socialist position that a new society may be born of a sudden\nrevolution.\n\nMutation, the savants tell us, runs in periods, alternating with\nperiods of apparent stability. Then if we are not supported we are at\nany rate not contradicted, when we assert that in social development,\nperiods of economic evolution, with apparent social stability, are\nfollowed by periods of social revolution when the entire social\nsuperstructure is transformed.\n\nIt is no longer necessary to assume countless millions of years for\nthe evolution of living forms. A plant enjoys a period of apparent\nstability, then it reaches a point where it \u201cexplodes\u201d and gives\nbirth to new species. If a plant, why not a society? At least there\nis nothing in the example of the plant that will furnish an argument\nagainst such an idea.\n\nIf the history of biological science for the last half a century were\nto be written by a Socialist, who had no scruples about wresting the\nrecord so as to support his Socialist theories, he would have nothing\nto gain by changing a single line.\n\nThere is nothing in that history to contradict us when we assert the\nprobability or the certainty, of a social revolution. Who, that looks\nabout him, can fail to see that death is plainly branded in the brow\nof the existing social order? Its legal, political, and financial\ninstitutions are tied together with rotten thread. It is already\noutliving its usefulness, and when it goes it will have few mourners.\nBut millions will hail with joy that social mutation which will kindle\nthe fires of human liberty, and create, if not a new Heaven, at least,\na new earth.\n\n\n\n\nVI.\n\nKROPOTKIN\u2019S \u201cMUTUAL AID.\u201d\n\n\nLamarck was the first to present the theory of Evolution in a\nthoroughly scientific manner. Then Darwin discovered \u201cthe great\nprinciple which rules the evolution of organisms\u201d; the principle of\n\u201cnatural selection.\u201d Then Weismann repudiated current ideas as to how\nthe fittest \u201carrived,\u201d or \u201coriginated,\u201d and presented in their place a\ntheory of his own, which is still under discussion. DeVries raised the\nquestion as to whether new species \u201carrive\u201d by a gradual accumulation\nof tiny changes, or by sudden leaps--mutations--and demonstrated the\nlatter by his experiments with the evening primrose.\n\nAnd now comes Kropotkin with the question, \u201cWho are the fittest?\u201d What\nconstitutes the fitness, which makes for survival? Are those organisms\nthe fittest which are constantly waging a war of extermination against\nevery other organism in the struggle for existence, or, are those the\nfittest which co-operate with each other in the preservation of the\ncommon life of all?\n\nThe raising of this question brings to light another striking\ninstance of the influence of class interests on scientific thought.\nIt is a matter of common observation that any class, struggling for\nwhat it conceives to be its own emancipation, looks to the past for\njustification and precedent. In the English speaking world there is a\nwidely prevailing opinion that the Magna Charta, extorted from King\nJohn at Runnymede, is the foundation of modern liberty.\n\nThe French bourgeoisie, struggling to overthrow the feudal monarchy,\nsought its justification in that \u201cstate of nature\u201d which a despotic\nmonarchy was said to contravene. Thus writers like Rousseau idealized\nnature, representing it as comparatively perfect, and declared that\na restoration of \u201cnatural rights\u201d was essential to liberty. But when\nthis same bourgeoisie had won its victory and enthroned itself, and\ninstead of increasing the liberty, had in many respects, deepened the\ndegradation of the mass of the French people, its ideas about the\n\u201cstate of nature\u201d underwent a radical change. And this happened not\nonly in France but wherever the bourgeoisie triumphed.\n\nNow the \u201cstate of nature\u201d was one of constant carnage; nature was\n\u201cred in tooth and claw.\u201d And this chamber of horrors was supposed to\nsupport the exploitation of labor, and countenance a brutalization of\nchildhood that constitutes the blackest stain on human history. So\nstrong was the swirl that Huxley was swept into it; but, although he\nmaintained the \u201cgladiatorial\u201d view of nature, he repudiated the social\natrocities which capitalist apologists such as Spencer sought to deduce\nfrom it. In later years, Spencer partially abandoned his premise as to\nthe animal world but, strangely enough, kept it intact for primitive\nman.\n\nFor this view of nature as full of nothing but darkness and cruelty,\nwhere, as Hobbes had put it, there waged \u201cthe war of every one against\neverybody,\u201d the great authority of Darwin was invoked. In fact, Darwin\nwas supposed to be almost solely responsible for the theory, and its\noverthrow by Kropotkin was heralded by the uninformed as another of\nthose \u201cdeath-blows\u201d of which Darwinism is thought to have received so\nmany during the last quarter of a century.\n\nKropotkin, however, in his introduction, claims that the idea of mutual\naid is \u201cin reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas\nexpressed by Darwin in the \u2018Descent of Man\u2019\u201d. Darwin said: \u201cThose\ncommunities which included the greatest number of sympathetic members\nwould flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.\u201d\nKropotkin complains that Darwin did not sufficiently develop this idea,\nbut over-emphasized the idea of \u201ccompetition\u201d for life, and this error,\nhe insists, was further accentuated by his disciples. \u201cIt happened with\nDarwin\u2019s theory,\u201d he says, \u201cas it always happens with theories having\nany bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it according to\nhis own hints, his followers narrowed it still more.\u201d\n\nIt is a mistake to suppose that Kropotkin denies the Darwinian\nprinciple of mutual struggle. \u201cIt is evident,\u201d says he, \u201cthat no\nreview of evolution can be complete unless these two dominant currents\nare analyzed. * * * The struggles between these two forces make, in\nfact, the substance of history.\u201d He anticipates the objection that\nhis work only emphasizes the principle of mutual aid by insisting\nthat the principle of struggle has \u201calready been analyzed, described,\nand glorified from time immemorial. In fact, up to the present time,\nthis current alone has received attention from the epical poet, the\nannalist, the historian, and the sociologist.\u201d\n\nThe main body of his book is a solid mass of evidence of the existence\nof mutual aid everywhere in the living world, from the lowest insects\nto the highest mammals; and from the first stone age to the twentieth\ncentury. It consists of eight chapters, the first two of which are\ndevoted to \u201cMutual Aid among Animals.\u201d\n\nHere, the theory of the human origin of society is utterly demolished.\nComplex social arrangements, popularly supposed to be limited to ants\nand bees, are shown to flourish everywhere, especially among birds.\n\nWith the parrot mutual aid is developed to such an extent that\nKropotkin places it \u201cat the very top of the whole feathered world\nfor the development of its intelligence.\u201d The white cockatoos of\nAustralia, in raiding a crop, mutually aid each other so shrewdly as\nto \u201cbaffle all stratagems\u201d to thwart them. \u201cBefore starting to plunder\na cornfield, they first send out a reconnoitering party which occupies\nthe highest trees in the vicinity of the field, while other scouts\nperch upon the intermediate trees between the field and the forest and\ntransmit signals. If the report runs \u2018all right,\u2019 a score of cockatoos\nwill separate from the bulk of the band, take a flight in the air,\nand then fly towards the trees nearest to the field. They also will\nscrutinize the neighborhood for a long while, and only then will give\nthe signal for general advance, after which the whole band starts at\nonce and plunders the field in no time.\u201d\n\nMutual aid is very conspicuous among pelicans. \u201cThey always go fishing\nin numerous bands and after having chosen an appropriate bay, they form\na wide half circle in face of the shore, and narrow it by paddling\ntowards the shore, catching all the fish that happen to be enclosed\nin the circle. On narrow rivers and canals they even divide into two\nparties, each of which draws up on a half circle, and both paddle to\nmeet each other, just as if two parties of men dragging two long nets\nshould advance to capture all the fish taken between the nets when both\nparties come to meet.\u201d\n\nOur familiar friend, the house sparrow, is not overlooked and is said\nto have practiced mutual aid to such an extent as to be recognized even\nby the ancient Greeks. Kropotkin quotes from memory, the Greek Orator\nwho exclaimed: \u201cWhile I am speaking to you a sparrow has come to tell\nother sparrows that a slave has dropped on the floor a sack of corn,\nand they all go there to feed on the grain.\u201d Sparrows also maintain\nsocial discipline: \u201cIf a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest a\ncomrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the\ngroup interferes against the lazy comrade.\u201d Kropotkin presents a number\nof well authenticated observations of the great compassion and sympathy\nprevailing among those wild creatures, which are popularly supposed to\nbe always flying at each others\u2019 throats: J.\u00a0C. Woods\u2019 narrative \u201cof a\nweasel which came to pick up and carry away an injured comrade;\u201d Brehm,\nwho \u201chimself saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which\nhad a wound several weeks old.\u201d Captain Stansbury, on his journey to\nUtah, as quoted by Darwin, \u201csaw a blind pelican which was fed, and well\nfed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought a distance\nof thirty miles.\u201d\n\nFrom these and a multitude of similar cases Kropotkin concludes that\nwhile \u201cno naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for life,\ncarried on through organic nature, is the greatest generalization of\nour century, that struggle is very often collective, against adverse\ncircumstances.\u201d\n\nKropotkin in concluding his consideration of animals, immensely\nstrengthens his position by pointing out various methods by which new\nspecies may develop or old ones disappear, without the operation of a\ndeadly competition between individuals. \u201cThe squirrels, for instance,\nwhen there is a scarcity of cones in the larch forests, remove to\nthe fir-tree forests, and this change of food has certain well known\nphysiological effects on squirrels. If this change of habits does not\nlast--if next year the cones are again plentiful in the dark larch\nwood--no new variety of squirrels will evidently arise from this cause.\nBut if part of the wide area occupied by the squirrels begins to have\nits physical characters altered--in consequence of, let us say, a\nmilder climate or desiccation, (drying up) which both bring about an\nincrease of the pine forests in proportion to the larch woods--and\nif some other conditions occur to induce squirrels to dwell on the\noutskirts of the desiccating region--we shall then have a new, i. e.,\nan incipient new species of squirrels. A larger proportion of squirrels\nof the new, better-adapted variety would survive each year, and the\nintermediate links would die in the course of time, without having been\nstarved out by Malthusian competitors.\u201d\n\nAgain: \u201cIf we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the\nwinter through in the Steppes of Transbaikalia, we find them very lean\nand exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted not\nbecause there is not enough food for all of them--the grass buried\nunder a thin sheet of snow is everywhere in abundance--but because of\nthe difficulty of getting it from beneath the snow and this difficulty\nis the same for all horses alike. * * * We can safely say that their\nnumber are not kept down by competition; that at no time of the year\nthey need struggle, for food and that if they never reach anything,\napproaching over-population, the cause is in the climate, and not in\ncompetition.\u201d\n\nAfter citing the rodents that combine to store food for the winter, or\nfall asleep about the time competition should set in; and the buffaloes\nwhich form immense herds to migrate across a continent to where food\nis plentiful; and beavers, which when they grow numerous, divide into\ntwo parties, and go, the old ones down the river, and the young ones up\nthe river and avoid competition; after citing these and many others,\nhe declares the mandate of nature to be: \u201cDon\u2019t compete!--competition\nis always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources\nto avoid it! * * * Therefore combine--practice mutual aid! That is the\nsurest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the\nbest guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectually, and\nmorally.\u201d\n\nThe third chapter deals with \u201cMutual Aid Among Savages.\u201d Here we meet\nthe question as to whether the family is an ancient institution,\nantedating the tribe and clan or whether it appeared at a much later\ndate as an outgrowth of the clan. Kropotkin takes the latter view as\nadvocated by Morgan, Bachofen, Maine, Lubbock and Tylor, and rejects\nthe former as presented by Starcke and Westermarck.\n\nThe savage of anthropological research is shown to be a very different\ncreature from the blood-thirsty monster of popular tradition.\n\u201cSometimes he is a cannibal, it is true, but not often, and then it\nis closely associated with economic necessity, and is abandoned when\nfood becomes plentiful.\u201d The custom of leaving old men in the woods to\ndie, is bad enough, but not so bad as supposed. They usually carry the\nold man with them in their migrations until he himself grows tired of\nbeing a burden and begs to be killed. When this point is reached, he\nis given more than his share of food, and left in the woods to die,\nbecause no one has the heart to kill him. Infanticide is practiced from\nthe same motive which induces savages to take all kinds of measures for\ndiminishing the birth-rate--they cannot rear all of their children.\nIn times of plenty it disappears. It was when these customs were\nenveloped in a religious halo and preserved as sacred ceremonies, after\nall necessity for them had disappeared, that they attained their most\nrevolting characters.\n\nHe believed in revenge but it was to be strictly measured by the\noffense. It must be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; not a\nhead for an eye, or an eye for a tooth. He only killed his enemies,\nand he always, at all costs, defended the members of his own tribe.\n\u201cWithin the tribe everything is shared in common; every morsel of\nfood is divided among all present; and if the savage is alone in the\nwoods, he does not begin his meal until he has loudly shouted thrice\nan invitation to any one who may hear his voice to share his meal.\u201d...\n\u201cIf he infringes one of the smaller tribal rules, he is prosecuted by\nthe mockeries of the women.\u201d \u201cWhen he enters his neighbors\u2019 territory\nhe must loudly announce his coming, and if he enters a house he must\ndeposit his hatchet at the entrance. If one shows greediness when spoil\nis divided all the others give him their share to shame him.\u201d Scolding\nand scorning are greatly condemned. Their children are not very\nquarrelsome and very rarely fight. The most they may say, is, \u201cYour\nmother does not know sewing,\u201d or \u201cYour father is blind of one eye.\u201d\n\nThe savage identified his interests with those of his tribe; he was no\nindividualist, and under no circumstances would he have consented to\nchild labor.\n\nWhen we reach the barbarians, who are considered in the fourth chapter,\nwe enter the historical period. At first sight, mutual aid seems to be\nnon-existent at this period. Here there seems to be nothing but battle\nand bloodshed. But the reason is not far to seek; it is because, until\nrecently historians regaled us exclusively with what has been aptly\ncalled, \u201cdrum and trumpet history.\u201d \u201cThey hand down to posterity the\nmost minute descriptions of every war, every battle and skirmish, every\ncontest and act of violence, every kind of individual suffering; but\nthey hardly give any trace of the countless acts of mutual support\nand devotion which every one of us knows from his own experience *\n* * The annalists of old never failed to chronicle the petty wars\nand calamities which harrassed their contemporaries but they paid no\nattention whatever to the life of the masses, although the masses\nchiefly used to toil peacefully while the few indulged in fighting.\u201d\n\nBut Sir Henry Maine in his work on the \u201cOrigin of International Law,\u201d\nhas fully proved that \u201cMan has never been so ferocious or so stupid\nas to submit to such an evil as war without some kind of an effort to\nprevent it.\u201d And he has shown how exceedingly great is \u201cthe number of\nancient institutions which bear the marks of a design to stand in the\nway of war, or to provide an alternative to it.\u201d\n\nA pregnant suggestion is offered as to the causes of that great\nmigration of barbarians which resulted in the overthrow of the Roman\nempire. \u201cIt is desiccation, a quite recent desiccation continued still\nat a speed which we formerly were not prepared to admit. Against it man\nwas powerless. When the inhabitants of North-West Mongolia and East\nTurkestan saw that water was abandoning them they had no course open\nto them but to move down the broad valleys leading to the lowlands,\nand to thrust westward the inhabitants of the plains.\u201d And so the one\ngreat war recorded of the barbarians, was thrust upon them by absolute\nphysical necessity.\n\nThe barbarians had no social problem, for that private property in the\nmeans of life which constitutes the foundation of modern individualism,\nand from which the degradation and poverty of modern civilization\nresults, was unknown among them. They were communists. The interest of\none was the care of all. Nothing was owned privately until it reached\nthe very point of consumption and not always then, as food was largely\neaten at communal meals. This social form still survives especially in\nRussia, and Kropotkin says: \u201cThe sight of a Russian commune mowing a\nmeadow--the men rivalling each other in their advance with the scythe,\nwhile the women turn the grass over and throw it up into heaps--is\none of the most inspiring sights; it shows what human work might be\nand ought to be. The hay, in such case, is divided among the separate\nhouseholds, and it is evident that no one has the right of taking hay\nfrom a neighbor\u2019s stack without his permission; but the limitation of\nthis last rule among the Caucasian Ossetes is most noteworthy. When the\ncuckoo cries and announces that spring is coming, and that the meadows\nwill soon be clothed again with grass, every one in need has the right\nof taking from a neighbor\u2019s stack the hay he wants for his cattle. The\nold communal rights are thus reasserted, as if to prove how contrary\nunbridled individualism is to human nature.\u201d\n\nWhen the early Christians \u201chad all things in common,\u201d they were not\nreaching forward to modern Socialism; they were harking back to this\nprimitive communism which shed its joy and plenty on the sons and\ndaughters of men for a thousand generations. These barbarian communists\nwere thorough democrats, and their folkmotes, where everybody gathered\nand had their say, were the only semblance of government they\npossessed, and so thoroughly were its decisions respected that no\nofficers were needed to enforce them. They were also our superiors not\nonly in refusing to work their children, but also in scorning to beat\nthem. They said: \u201cThe body of the child reddens from the stroke, but\nthe face of him who strikes reddens from shame.\u201d\n\nThe two chapters on \u201cMutual Aid in the Medieval City\u201d treat the guild\nas the chief manifestation of the principle during this period. A\npicture is presented, in some detail of the struggle of the free cities\nagainst the increasing encroachments of the centralizing states.\nThe medieval cities are finally defeated, the guilds destroyed, but\nthe indestructible principle of mutual aid takes on new forms and\naccommodates itself to new conditions.\n\nThis brings us to the closing chapters on \u201cMutual Aid Among Ourselves.\u201d\nThe first of these two chapters is devoted almost entirely to the\nmutual aid habits and institutions which still survive in the present\nday villages of Russia, Switzerland, France and Germany. The last\nchapter takes up really modern instances of the principle, the first\nand most important are the Labor unions and their strikes, Co-operative\nsocieties, Life-boat associations, Charitable organizations.\n\nThe illustration of this principle which is cited first after the Labor\nunion is the Socialist movement. Kropotkin presents his conception of\nthe Socialist movement as a manifestation of mutual aid in existing\nsociety in the following eloquent passage:\n\n\u201cEvery experienced politician knows that all great political movements\nwere fought upon large and often distant issues, and that those of\nthem were the strongest which provoked most disinterested enthusiasm.\nAll great historical movements have had this character, and for our\nown generation Socialism stands in that case. \u2018Paid agitators,\u2019 is, no\ndoubt, the favorite refrain of those who know nothing about it. The\ntruth however, is that--to speak only of what I know personally--if I\nhad kept a diary for the last twenty-four years, the reader of such a\ndiary would have had the word \u2018heroism\u2019 constantly on his lips. But\nthe men I would have spoken of were not heroes; they were average men,\ninspired by a grand idea. Every Socialist newspaper--and there are\nhundreds of them in Europe alone--has the same history of years of\nsacrifice without any hope of reward, and, in the overwhelming majority\nof cases, even without any personal ambition. I have seen families\nliving without knowing what would be their food tomorrow, the husband\nboycotted all round in his little town for his part in the paper, and\nthe wife supporting the family by sewing, and such a situation lasting\nfor years, until the family would retire, without a word of reproach,\nsimply saying: \u2018Continue; we can hold out no more!\u2019 I have seen men,\ndying from consumption, and knowing it, and yet knocking about in snow\nand fog to prepare meetings within a few weeks from death, and only\nthen retiring to the hospital with the words: \u2018Now friends I am done;\nthe doctors say I have but a few weeks to live. Tell the comrades I\nshall be happy if they come to see me.\u2019 I have seen facts that would be\ndescribed as \u2018idealization\u2019 if I told them in this place; and the very\nnames of these men, hardly known outside a narrow circle of friends,\nwill soon be forgotten when the friends too have passed away. In fact,\nI don\u2019t know myself which most to admire, the unbounded devotion of\nthese few or the sum total of petty acts of devotion of the great\nnumber. Every quire of a penny paper sold, every meeting, every hundred\nvotes which are won at a Socialist election, represent an amount of\nenergy and sacrifices of which no outsider has the faintest idea. And\nwhat is now done by Socialists has been done by every popular and\nadvanced party, political and religious, in the past. All past progress\nhas been promoted by like men and by a like devotion.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nVII.\n\nA REPLY TO HAECKEL.\n\n\nThe revolt against \u201cauthority\u201d has been carried to ridiculous extremes.\nThe Manchester school individualist, Herbert Spencer, and the\nmetaphysical egoist, Max Stirner, would alike agree to the reduction of\nall authority to the smallest possible residue. The most reckless of\ntheir disciples, having shut out from their thoughts all communication\nwith the world of reality, would make it impossible for six men to\npull effectively on a rope because five of them would be obliged to\nrecognize the authority of the sixth, when he, at the proper moment,\nshould call \u201cHeave, ho.\u201d\n\nTo thinkers of this order, music would be impossible. Who could imagine\na radical individualist bowing to a waved stick and recognizing the\nhighly centralized authority of the \u201cleader.\u201d The music of the logical,\nauthority-repudiating individualist, would be the haphazard beating of\nthe tom-tom of the East Indian, and not the highly regulated strains of\na modern orchestra.\n\nThis folly is equalled, if not out-done, by those who refuse to\nrecognize authority in science and thought. When a man claims to have\na new and fundamental discovery in astronomy, and at the same time\nspeaks slightingly of the researches of physicists such as Newton,\nKant, and Laplace, it is fairly safe to conclude that you are listening\nto a fool who has nothing to say worthy of a second thought. Not until\none has trodden every rung of the ladder which has been previously\ntrodden, is he able to mount a step higher. And it is the performance\nof this task, wholly, or at least in the first part, that constitutes\nthe one so doing an \u201cauthority.\u201d\n\nHow often does one hear an addle-brained, know-nothing say: \u201cI\nrecognize no authority; I think for myself.\u201d How shall one think\nwithout ideas? And how is it possible to obtain ideas apart from the\nacquisition of knowledge? And where can knowledge be obtained except\nfrom those who have it?\n\nAll \u201cauthority\u201d in science and thought is founded on knowledge of the\nsubject in question. Socialists quote Karl Marx as an authority on\npolitical economy, because his writings prove that he knew more about\nthe production and distribution of wealth than any man of his century.\nLavoisier is an authority in chemistry, because he know more about the\ncomposition of substances than any three of his contemporaries.\n\nBut much confusion has been wrought, by men of undisputed authority in\ntheir own field, pronouncing positive verdicts in departments where\ntheir opinions had no value. What a great composer has to say about\nthe value of a certain note must be respectfully considered as being\nof importance, but, unless he has studied geology, his opinions on the\nprobable origin or age of the Rocky Mountains will have no more value,\nand may have less than those of the policeman on the nearest corner.\n\nAn excellent example of the confusion which may arise in this way,\nwas given to the world in 1877, at the Congress of Naturalists held\nat Munich in September of that year. At that time the naturalists\nof Europe were divided into two opposing camps, one accepting and\nthe other rejecting the Darwinian theory of \u201cnatural selection.\u201d The\nleaders of both divisions were Germans, though a preponderance of the\nGermans favored Darwin, whilst the French, still under the influence\nof, or agreeing with, Flourens, although he had been dead a decade,\nwere almost unanimously opposed.\n\nThe honors of leading the fight for Darwinism, at the Munich Congress,\nfell to Haeckel, and on the 18th of September he threw down the gage\nin a brilliant address in which he defended the ideas of the great\nEnglishman. Haeckel also advocated the teaching of evolution in the\nschools. The battle raged back and forth between the two armies, until\nVirchow, the great pathologist, dropped a bombshell in the Congress by\nboldly asserting: \u201cDarwinism leads directly to Socialism.\u201d\n\nHere biological arguments ceased. The only thing in order was to clear\nthe skirts of Darwinism of the terrible charge of being socialistic. Of\ncourse this task fell to Haeckel, and he was loyally assisted by Oscar\nSchmidt.\n\nWriting in \u201cAusland\u201d two months later Schmidt said: \u201cIf the Socialists\nwere prudent they would do their utmost to kill by silent neglect, the\ntheory of descent, for that theory most emphatically proclaims that the\nSocialist ideas are impracticable.\u201d\n\nHaeckel replied to Virchow at some length, and as that reply is rather\ndifficult to obtain I will give it here in full as quoted by Ferri, and\ntranslated by Robert Rives La Monte:\n\n\u201cAs a matter of fact, there is no scientific doctrine which proclaims\nmore openly than the theory of descent, that the equality of\nindividuals, toward which Socialism tends, is an impossibility,\nthat this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the\nnecessary and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.\n\n\u201cSocialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal\npossessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on\nthe contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply\nimpossible; that in human societies, as in animal societies, neither\nthe rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of\nall the members of a society are or ever can be equal.\n\n\u201cThe great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory of\nevolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the\ntheory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an original\nunity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the\ncomplexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions\nof existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal.\nThere must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities and\nthe innate tendencies, which also vary more or less widely. In view of\nall this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?\n\n\u201cThe more highly the social life is developed, the more important\nbecomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more\nrequisite it becomes for the stable existence of the state as a whole\nthat its members should distribute among themselves the multifarious\ntasks of life, each performing a single function; and as the labor\nwhich must be performed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure\nof strength, talent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more\nand more, it is natural that the remuneration of this labor must also\nvary widely. These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to\nme every intelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate\nof the theory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution as the\nbest antidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the\nSocialists.\n\n\u201cAnd it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in\nhis denunciation, had in mind, rather than the mere metamorphic\ndevelopment, the theory of descent, with which it is always confused!\nDarwinism is anything rather than socialistic.\n\n\u201cIf one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this English\ntheory--which is quite permissible--this tendency can be nothing but\naristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic.\n\n\u201cThe theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in\nthat of plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small and\nprivileged minority alone which succeeds in living and developing\nitself; the immense majority, on the contrary suffer and succumb\nmore or less prematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every\nspecies of plants and animals, and the young individuals who issue\nfrom them. But the number of those who have the good fortune to reach\nfully developed maturity and to attain the goal of their existence is\nrelatively insignificant.\n\n\u201cThe cruel and pitiless \u2018struggle for existence\u2019 which rages everywhere\nthrough animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage,\nthis eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings is an\nundeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittest\nis able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. The\ngreat majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destined\nto perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but one\ncannot deny or change it. \u2018Many are called, but few are chosen!\u2019\n\n\u201cThe selection, the \u2018election\u2019 of these \u2018elect\u2019 is by absolute\nnecessity bound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast\nmultitude of beings whom they survived. And so another learned\nEnglishman has called the fundamental principle of Darwinism \u2018the\nsurvival of the fittest, the victory of the best.\u2019\n\n\u201cAt all events the principle of selection is not in the slightest\ndegree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If\nthen, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has,\naccording to Virchow, for the statesman \u2018an extraordinarily dangerous\nside\u2019 the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations.\u201d\n\nAnd now let us turn to the closing pages of the second volume of\nHaeckel\u2019s valuable work, \u201cThe History of Creation.\u201d We shall find it\ninteresting and instructive to observe the nature of the argument which\nhe there uses with great effect against Virchow. Virchow had delivered\nhis celebrated address at Berlin, which closed as follows: \u201cIt is\nabsolutely certain that Man is not descended from apes.\u201d\n\nHaeckel takes this up, gives a resum\u00e9 of the facts known to zoology\non this point, and then winds up with the following: \u201cIn view of this\nstate of affairs, we zoologists, recognized as authorities on the\nsubject, may surely ask, How can many so-called anthropologists still\nmaintain that there exists no sort of actual proofs of the \u2018Derivation\nof Man from Apes\u2019? How can Virchow, Ranke, and others, who are not\nzoologists, in the speeches they annually deliver at anthropological\nand other congresses, continue to declare that this \u2018Pithecoid thesis\u2019\nis an empty hypothesis, an unproved assertion, and a mere dream of the\nphilosophers of nature? How can these anthropologists still continue\nto ask for \u2018certain proofs\u2019 of this thesis when proofs with all the\nclearness that could be desired lie before them, and are unanimously\nrecognized by all zoologists? As regards Virchow\u2019s often quoted\ndeclarations against the Pithecoid thesis, they have obtained great\nfavor in wide circles, only because of the high authority this famous\nnaturalist enjoys in an entirely different domain of science. His\n\u2018cellular pathology,\u2019 his ingenious application of the cell-theory\nto the whole province of medicine, introduced a grand advance in\nthat branch of science thirty years ago. This great and lasting\nservice rendered by him has, however, no connection whatever with the\nunyielding and negative position which, unfortunately, Virchow persists\nin assuming towards the doctrine of evolution.\u201d\n\nIt probably never occurred to Haeckel that the argument which he here\nuses to meet Virchow\u2019s opposition to evolution, would serve quite as\neffectively as a reply to his own opposition to Socialism.\n\nAs regards Haeckel\u2019s \u201coften quoted declarations against\u201d Socialism,\n\u201cthey have obtained great favor in wide circles, only because of the\nhigh authority which this famous naturalist enjoys in an entirely\ndifferent domain of science. His biogenetic principle, discovered in\nembryology, \u201cintroduced a grand advance in that science thirty years\nago. This great and lasting service rendered by him has, however no\nconnection whatever with the unyielding and negative position which,\nunfortunately,\u201d Haeckel \u201cpersists in assuming towards the doctrine of\u201d\nSocialism.\n\nHaeckel\u2019s complaint that Virchow could not judge the merits of\nevolution because he was not a zoologist, is well taken. But the\nSocialist has as good or better right to assert that Haeckel was\nincapable of estimating the relationship of Socialism to Darwinism, for\nhe certainly knew a good deal less about Socialism than Virchow knew of\nzoology.\n\nThis is precisely the trouble with Haeckel\u2019s criticism of what he calls\nSocialism. Of the theories of Karl Marx and the modern scientific\nSocialists, he knew absolutely nothing. The Socialism he condemned\nhad been abandoned by the Socialists themselves, nearly thirty years\nbefore his criticism was made.\n\n\u201cAbsurd equalitarian notions,\u201d granted; but they were not even the\nsole property of the utopian Socialists. They borrowed them from the\nbourgeois revolutionists of 1789. It was they who boasted of the\nequality they would set up. That equality, which, as Engels says, only\n\u201cmaterialized in bourgeois equality before the law.\u201d--\u201cThe equality\nbefore the law of all commodity-owners.\u201d It was this struggling\nbourgeoisie that adopted as its catch-words, \u201cliberty, fraternity,\nequality,\u201d and applied them to a typical bourgeois use when they\ninscribed them above the entrances to French prisons.\n\nA significant clause in the second sentence of Haeckel\u2019s criticism is,\n\u201cin human societies as in animal societies,\u201d the duties, etc., of the\nmembers cannot be \u201cequal.\u201d The only possible point this could have as\na criticism of Socialism, would be its use to deny the possibility of\nabolishing social class divisions. There is nothing to show whether\nHaeckel intended it to have such a specific application, but as any\nother application it might have could be in no way opposed to the\nSocialist position, I need only show its failure in that regard.\n\n\u201cBee\u201d society may be said to have class divisions, and it must be\nconceded that these classes cannot be abolished by anything that\ncould, by any stretch of the imagination, be called \u201cbee socialism.\u201d\nBut the reason for this is not far to seek and, when found, it makes\nany argument by analogy, against Socialism, impossible. Bee workers\nare \u201cphysiologically\u201d incapable of discharging any other function in\nbee society. They are females, incapable of maternity. As a result\nof this the queen bee is obliged to shoulder the whole burden of the\nreproduction of the species, and she is specialized in this direction\nto such an extent, that she could not possibly be a worker. The drone,\nas the male breeder, is in the same fix, and the popular notion that\nthey are useless loafers, has its origin in the bee custom of applying\nthe boot, or something worse, to all superfluous members of the drone\nclass.\n\n\u201cA hive of bees,\u201d says Prof. Huxley, \u201cis an organic polity, a society\nin which the part played by each member is determined by organic\nnecessities. Queens, workers, and drones are, so to speak, castes\ndivided from one another by marked physical barriers.\u201d\n\nSays Ernest Untermann in his fine chapter on this question, in \u201cMarxian\nEconomics\u201d: \u201cEvery textbook on natural history describes the different\norders. For instance, the societies of bees are \u2018monarchies\u2019, those of\nants \u2018republics\u2019. But in either case, biological variation determines\nthe form of these societies. Queen bees, drones, and workers are of\norganically different structure and equipped with different specialized\norgans. The queen bee is equipped only for the duties of conception\nand the laying of eggs. The drone cannot perform any other function\nbut that of fertilizing the queen. The worker alone has organs for\ngathering flower dust, honey, and manufacturing wax.\u201d Class divisions\nin bee society are therefore \u201cbiological\u201d and not economic. But\nHaeckel\u2019s comparison ignores this vital distinction. Before this\nargument can be used against the Socialist advocacy of class abolition,\nit must be shown that a queen cannot wash clothes with starvation as an\nalternative, and that a pleb woman could not wear a coronet, should her\nfather invest in a busted duke.\n\nTrue there are other animal societies which have no such biological\ndivision. But these have no private property in the means of life,\nand therefore no classes. Pelicans and crows recognize only three\ngrounds as justification for idleness--infancy, old age and sickness or\naccident.\n\nA recent Socialist writer said: \u201cTake two babies together--the worker\u2019s\nbaby and the parasite\u2019s baby. There they are, both of them, out of\nthe great mystery. Examine their soft little bodies. Do you see spurs\non the one and a saddle on the other? And yet, one is to grow up a\nprofligate loafer, and the other a starved and beaten worker. One to\nrot at the top; the other to be stunted and oppressed at the bottom.\u201d\n\nOf course these two babies would not be equal, either actually or\npotentially, but is that any reason why they should be given an unequal\nstart? How are we to find out which is the best in any sense, if a\nmultitude of opportunities open to the one are to be closed to the\nother?\n\nAnd here Haeckel\u2019s implied parallel breaks down once more. In nature\nthe strong and capable survive in the struggle for existence; nature\ngives something like a fair field and no favor. But in capitalist\nsociety, a puling son of a rich father is coddled to maturity, and\nreproduces others of his kind; while the lusty child of a worker is\nmurdered by poisonous milk, or debarred from marriage by low wages.\n\nIn nature, \u201cfittest\u201d does not mean best in any moral sense, except\nindirectly, as that the practice of certain moral principles in animal\nsocieties may constitute, or add to, fitness. But in present society in\na vast number of instances, fitness does not mean \u201cbest\u201d even to the\nextent that such a word may be used in the natural world.\n\nA real estate \u201cshark\u201d is a libel on the fish. An indispensable\nqualification in business is to have few scruples and be a first-class\nliar. Honesty and suicide are synonymous terms.\n\nThe statement that natural selection \u201cfavors aristocratic aspirations,\u201d\ninvolves the same fallacy. It assumes that aristocrats are on top\nbecause of fitness to be there. Recent revelations in Berlin indicate\nthat the aristocrats of Haeckel\u2019s own country are \u201cfittest\u201d for the\ngarbage can.\n\nHaeckel\u2019s main position is that \u201cthe struggle for existence\u201d in nature\nis a justification for \u201ccompetition\u201d in society. To begin with,\nKropotkin has shown that Haeckel grossly misrepresents nature when he\nspeaks of \u201cthe cruel, pitiless \u2018struggle for existence\u2019 which rages\neverywhere throughout animated nature\u201d and \u201cbetween all living beings.\u201d\nWhen this is used as a defense of present society, it is equal to\nsaying that human society should seek its models among the lowest forms\nof organic life rather than the highest. Haeckel\u2019s position was taken\nby Spencer and received the following clever reply from Prof. Ritchie:\n\u201cThe struggle among plants and the lower animals is mainly between\nmembers of the same species; and the individual competition between\nhuman beings, which is so much admired by Mr. Spencer, is of this\nprimitive kind.\u201d\n\nKropotkin says: \u201cIf we ask nature \u2018who are the fittest, those who are\ncontinually at war with each other, or those who support one another?\u2019\nwe at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid\nare undoubtedly the fittest.\u201d\n\nAs to the desirability of that \u201cpitiless struggle,\u201d Huxley pertinently\nsays: \u201cOf all the shapes which society has taken, that most nearly\napproaches perfection in which the war of the individual against the\nindividual is most strictly limited.\u201d\n\nWhatever may be the truth among the protozoa, we are safe in applying\nto society the statement of Ruskin: \u201cCo-operation is always and\neverywhere the law of life; competition is always and everywhere the\nlaw of death.\u201d\n\nHuman society eventually reaches a point of development where nature\u2019s\nhaphazard ways are interfered with, and man arranges means to an end.\nProfessor Schiaparelli thought he saw canals on Mars, and inferred\nintelligent inhabitants. The difference in water-ways, between blind\nnature and a designing intelligence, is the difference between a\nrambling river and a straight canal.\n\nNow human society has arrived at a stage where its consciousness of\nitself and the possibility of self-arrangement, becomes a factor. This\nis a tremendous step forward, and its future possibilities seem to be\nillimitable. Before this can be largely effective, however, it will be\nnecessary to thoroughly understand all fundamental social laws.\n\nWe had no rod to rule the lightning until we knew the laws of its\nmovement. There will be no real airship until we master the laws of\naerial flight. Socialism solves the social problem, not because it has,\nbut because it is, an explanation of the laws of social development in\ngeneral, and of existing society in particular. On these laws our faith\nis founded. By consciously arranging the social institutions which so\nprofoundly affect our lives, in harmony with these laws, we shall cease\nto be the slaves of a blind necessity.\n\nAs Engels has well said: \u201cMan\u2019s social organization, hitherto\nconfronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now\nbecomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective\nforces, that have hitherto governed history, pass under the control\nof man himself. Only from that time will man himself more and more\nconsciously, make his own history--only from that time will the social\ncauses set in motion by him have, in the main and in a constantly\ngrowing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man\nfrom the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nVIII.\n\nSPENCER\u2019S \u201cSOCIAL ORGANISM.\u201d\n\n\nThe crowning generalization of modern thought is that which presents\nthe Universe as a unity, inter-related in all its parts. By it,\nthe defenders of dualism are discredited, and their theological,\nmetaphysical philosophy is thrown aside. It is no longer God and Man,\nnor even Man and God, but Man only, with God an anthropomorphic shadow,\nrelated to man not as his creator, but as created by him. God and Man\nare not \u201ctwo,\u201d but in reality \u201cone.\u201d\n\nModern science has reversed the order of their appearance, and also the\norder of their dependence. That which seemed to our primitive ancestors\na living reality, a separate and independent being, proves, when\nsubmitted to the tests of anthropology and psychology, to have been a\ncreature of their own dreams.\n\nAnd thus, as a result of scientific research into the origin of dualism\nand the nature of dreams, as Professor Clifford says: \u201cThe dim and\nshadowy outline of the superhuman deity fades slowly from before\nus; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with\ngreater and greater clearness, the shape of a yet grander and nobler\nfigure--the figure of him who made all Gods and shall unmake them. From\nthe dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depths of every soul, the\nface of our father man looks out upon us, with the fire of eternal\nyouth in his eyes, and says: \u2018Before Jehovah was, I am.\u2019\u201d\n\nThe thinker who would expand his intellectual wings in this monistic\natmosphere, must possess not only a \u201cdiscriminating\u201d mind, but also, as\nMarcus Hitch suggests, a \u201cunifying\u201d mind. There are two errors he must\navoid; the creation of distinctions that do not exist and the ignoring\nof distinctions that do.\n\nThe chief sinner against this first canon of dialectical thinking\nis our old friend the theologian. When the evolutionary naturalists\ndemonstrated the hopeless untruth of his \u201crevealed\u201d legends about the\norigin of men and things, he sought refuge in the ingenious theory that\nthese fables while scientifically indefensible were, notwithstanding,\nspiritually true. In short, scientific truth and spiritual truth were\nso distinct as to have no vital relations. These \u201cartful dodgers\u201d have\nrelieved controversial literature of much of its wonted heaviness and\ncontributed generally to the gaiety of the nations.\n\nSocialists have always been among the first to enjoy these entertaining\nperformances, and it seems like divine retribution when these same\ntheological and \u201cReverend\u201d persons tumble over into the Socialist camp\nand bring their obsolete methods of thinking with them.\n\nThey dub themselves \u201cChristian\u201d Socialists and proceed to show that\n\u201cSocialism is a philosophy concerning the social and economic life of\nman, and not the religious at all.\u201d When Marx declared that political\nand legal and other social institutions and ideas were the result of\neconomic conditions and class interests, religious institutions and\nideas were, of course, exempt.\n\nAfter a mental contortion like that, what is to prevent a\nreconciliation between the 17th century twaddle of the methodist pulpit\nand the materialist conception of history?\n\nThose who break the second canon given, are not all theologians. Among\nthose who ignore distinctions that do exist, the biological sociologist\nis entitled to conspicuous mention.\n\nAugust Comte, who \u201cattempted to make of sociology a sort of\ntranscendental biology,\u201d had at least this excuse that he wrote his\npositivist philosophy before Darwin published his \u201cOrigin of Species\u201d\nand, therefore, while biology was yet in long clothes and sociology\nwas unborn. Although Comte is generally regarded as the founder of\nsociology, these limitations made it impossible to do little more than\ninvent the name and foresee its possibility.\n\nThese excuses, however, can scarcely be invoked for Haeckel, who, as\nwe have already seen, wholly ignored in his inferences, fundamental\ndifferences between the division of labor in animal societies and\nthat division in human societies. Haeckel\u2019s biological sociology\nconveniently overlooks the rather important fact that while a working\nbee can not by any possibility act as a drone, the working man has\nat least no physical disabilities to prevent him from doing anything\nthat pertains to the role of a prince. Reasoning by analogy is always\ndangerous, especially when the analogy itself breaks down.\n\nWhile it is well to keep these rules in mind, it must be conceded\nthat their critical application is somewhat limited when we come to\nSpencer\u2019s famous analogy between animal organisms and human societies.\nThe \u201csynthetic\u201d philosopher was much Haeckel\u2019s superior in sociology,\nand he possessed an immense fund of biological lore that was\nunavailable to Comte writing a quarter of a century earlier.\n\nThus Spencer seems to recognize that his essay on \u201cThe Social Organism\u201d\nis largely an ingenious analogy, from which conclusions must be drawn\nwith caution. Not that bourgeois scientists have always exhibited a\nvery scientific temper in this regard. On the contrary they have, on\nevery possible occasion, proclaimed that certain alleged truths in\nphysics or biology were in irreconcilable contradiction to certain\nSocialist conclusions in sociology.\n\nBut we may find a key to Spencer\u2019s chariness in the matter of drawing\nconclusions in the rather surprising fact, which will appear presently,\nthat the one legitimate conclusion which the analogy will thoroughly\nsustain, is an exact contradiction to all that Spencer had ever\nproclaimed on social questions.\n\nThe essay itself, like a great deal of Spencer\u2019s writing, is prolix\nand wearisome, so we shall select only his most important and striking\ncomparisons.\n\nThe introduction is excellent and has for its text Sir James\nMackintosh\u2019s great saying--great in his non-evolutionary age though\nvery common-place today--\u201cConstitutions are not made, but grow.\u201d He\nthen declares \u201cthe central idea of Plato\u2019s model republic\u201d to be \u201cthe\ncorrespondence between the parts of a society and the faculties of the\nhuman mind.\u201d\n\nHobbes, the philosopher of Malmesbury, comes next with his celebrated\n\u201cLeviathan.\u201d Hobbes sought to establish a still more definite\nparallelism; not, however between a society and the mind, but between\na society and the human body. Hobbes\u2019 \u201cLeviathan\u201d was the Commonwealth\nand he \u201ccarries this comparison so far as to actually give a drawing\nof the Leviathan--a vast human-shaped figure, whose body and limbs are\nmade up of multitudes of men.\u201d\n\nSpencer criticizes these analogies of Plato and Hobbes in detail, but\nfinds the chief error of both writers to consist in the assumption by\nboth \u201cthat the organization of a society is comparable, not simply to\nthe organization of a living body in general, but to the organization\nof a human body in particular. There is no warrant whatever for\nassuming this. It is in no way implied by the evidence; and is simply\none of those fancies which we commonly find mixed up with the truths\nof early speculation.\u201d But, insists Spencer: \u201cThe untenableness of\nthe particular parallelisms above instanced, is no ground for denying\nan essential parallelism; since early ideas are usually but vague\nadumbrations of the truth.\u201d\n\nLacking the great generalizations of biology, it was, as we have said,\n\u201cimpossible to trace out the real relations of special organizations to\norganizations of another order.\u201d Therefore he proposes \u201cto show what\nare the analogies which modern science discloses.\u201d\n\nSpencer then discovers four points in which an individual organism and\na society agree, and four in which they differ. The points of agreement\nare:\n\n(1.) \u201cThat commencing as small aggregations, they insensibly augment\nin mass; some of them eventually reaching ten thousand times what they\noriginally were.\u201d\n\n(2.) \u201cThat while at first so simple in structure as to be considered\nstructureless, they assume in the course of their growth a continually\nincreasing complexity of structure.\u201d\n\n(3.) \u201cThat though in their early, undeveloped states, there exists in\nthem scarcely any mutual dependence of parts, their parts gradually\nacquire a mutual dependence; which becomes at last so great, that the\nactivity and life of each part is made possible only by the activity\nand life of the rest.\u201d\n\n(4.) \u201cThat the life of a society is independent of, and far more\nprolonged than the lives of any of its component units; who are\nseverally born, grow, work, reproduce, and die, while the body politic\ncomposed of them survives generation after generation, increasing in\nmass, in completeness of structure, and in functional activity.\u201d\n\nThe four points of difference are:\n\n(1.) \u201cThat societies have no specific external forms.\u201d\n\n(2.) \u201cThat though the living tissue whereof an individual organism\nconsists, forms a continuous mass, the living elements of a society do\nnot form a continuous mass; but are more or less widely dispersed over\nsome portion of the earth\u2019s surface.\u201d\n\n(3.) \u201cThat while the ultimate living elements of an individual organism\nare mostly fixed in their relative positions, those of the social\norganism are capable of moving from place to place.\u201d\n\n(4.) \u201cThe last and perhaps the most important distinction is, that\nwhile in the body of an animal only a special tissue is endowed with\nfeeling, in a society all the members are endowed with feeling.\u201d\n\nIt is worthy of note that, while Spencer finds the parallelisms to\nincrease in significance the more they are examined, the differences\ntend to break down when they are worked out in detail.\n\nThe advantage which Spencer had over Plato and Hobbes is very clearly\nseen in the first and fourth parallelisms, neither of which could have\nbeen made until twenty-one years before, when in 1839, Theodore Schwann\ndeveloped his great theory that the body is an organized society of\ninterconnected cells. \u201cThe importance of this theory,\u201d says Professor\nThatcher, \u201ccan hardly be estimated. It gave an entirely new view to\nanimal and vegetable life.\u201d At any rate, it served Spencer greatly in\nthis essay.\n\nThe next ten pages are devoted to organic development from the\nprotozoa, the lowest tiny animal forms, to crustacea--crabs\netc.,--which are materially higher in the animal scale. This\ndevelopment is marked by increasing mutual dependence of parts and\na growing division of labor. It is compared to the development of\nsociety from primitive Bushmen to the early Anglo-Saxons, during which\ncorresponding phenomena are traced.\n\nHe escapes Haeckel\u2019s blunder at least to the extent of calling the\ntwo divisions of labor by their proper names. Among animals it is\nthe \u201cphysiological\u201d division of labor; in society, the \u201ceconomical\u201d\ndivision of labor. Whether he would have been able to still perceive\nthat distinction in dealing with those ant and bee communities where\nHaeckel got lost, there is nothing to show.\n\nSpencer\u2019s middle-class predilections come out strongly, and a very\npretty physiological justification is provided for that wholly\nadmirable section of the community.\n\nThe first step in the development of an embryo is its division into\ntwo main layers of cells--the mucous layer and the serous layer. The\nmucous layer, that fine inside skin of the body so to speak, absorbs\nnutriment. But that nutriment must be transferred to the serous layer\nwhich builds up the nerves and muscles. Presently there arises between\nthese two a third--the vascular layer. Out of this third layer the\nchief blood vessels are developed and these vessels serve to transport\nthe nutriment from the inner or mucous layer, which gathers it, to\nthe outer or serous layer, which uses it for the whole organization\u2019s\nupbuilding.\n\n\u201cWell,\u201d says Spencer, \u201cmay we not trace a parallel step in social\nprogress? Between the governing and the governed, there at first exists\nno intermediate class; and even in some societies that have reached\nconsiderable size, there are scarcely any but the nobles and their\nkindred on the one hand, and their serfs on the other; the social\nstructure being such that transfer of commodities takes place directly\nfrom slaves to their masters. But in societies of a higher type, there\ngrows up, between these two primitive classes, another--the trading\nor middle class. Equally at first as now, we may see that, speaking\ngenerally, this middle class is the analogue of the middle layer in the\nembryo.\u201d\n\nIt is a pity to disturb this serene complacency, by pointing out that\nthe real transporters of commodities are not the members of the middle\nclass who, as a rule, do little and live well, but that section of\nthe working class which mans freight trains, drives teams and shoves\ntrucks. As for that \u201chigher\u201d class of cells which receives these\ncommodities and consumes them while usefully engaged in building up\nthe nervous and muscular system; such comparison could only apply to\nsociety\u2019s brain workers, and it contains no justification for the\nuseless parasitic type represented by such charming persons as Harry\nThaw and Reggie Vanderbilt.\n\nAnother very interesting point is Spencer\u2019s physiological vindication\nof profit. The limbs, glands, or other members of an animal are\ndeveloped by exercise. But in order \u201cthat any organ in a living being\nmay grow by exercise, there needs to be a due supply of blood.\u201d All\naction implies waste; blood brings the materials for repair; and before\nthere can be growth, the quantity of blood supplied must be more than\nis requisite for repair.\n\n\u201cIn a society it is the same. If to some district which elaborates\nfor the community particular commodities--say the woolens of\nYorkshire--there comes an augmented demand; and if in fulfillment\nof this demand, a certain expenditure and wear and tear of the\nmanufacturing organization are incurred; and if, in payment for the\nextra quantity of woolens sent away there comes back only such quantity\nof commodities as replaces the expenditure, and makes good the waste of\nlife and machinery; there can clearly be no growth. That there may be\ngrowth, the commodities obtained in return must be more than sufficient\nfor these ends; and just in proportion as the surplus is great will the\ngrowth be rapid. Whence it is manifest that what in commercial affairs\nwe call profit, answers to the excess of nutrition over waste in a\nliving body.\u201d\n\nThis is \u201cphysiological\u201d political economy with a vengeance and shows to\nwhat straits bourgeois apologists are reduced to find a justification\nof that exploitation of labor which is the only source of profit. In\nconcluding this point Spencer seems to satirize his own position and\nat the same time gives something that looks very much like a socialist\nexplanation of panics. He says: \u201cAnd if in the body politic some part\nhas been stimulated into great productivity, and afterwards can not get\npaid for all its produce, certain of its members become bankrupt, and\nit decreases in size.\u201d\n\nThe truth of the whole matter is that Spencer is wholly at sea the\nmoment he touches political economy, and in place of some elementary\nknowledge on that subject, we have the obsolete theories of the\nManchester School proclaimed in the name of physiology.\n\nThen follows a series of very ingenious comparisons. Following Liebig,\nhe compares coins to blood corpuscles calling the later blood-discs to\nenhance the analogy and concludes: \u201cthroughout extensive divisions of\nthe lower animals, the blood contains no corpuscles; and in societies\nof low civilization, there is no money.\u201d\n\nThen the development of blood vessels in lower animals is compared\nto the development of roads in primitive societies; their greater\nperfection in higher animals comparing with the railroads which more\neffectively convey food stuffs to the centers of population. Amid much\nthat is fantastic and tedious, he says: \u201cAnd in railways we also see,\nfor the first time in the social organism, a system of double channels\nconveying currents in opposite directions as do the arteries and veins\nof a well-developed animal.\u201d\n\n\u201cWe come at length,\u201d says Spencer, \u201cto the nervous system.\u201d This is\nby far the most interesting item in Spencer\u2019s catalogue, because it\nis here that the evolutionary philosopher and the Manchester School\npolitician come into open contradiction.\n\n\u201cWe have now to compare the appliances by which a society as a whole,\nis regulated, with those by which the movements of an individual\ncreature are regulated.\u201d\n\nBeginning with the nervous systems of lower animals he discovers\ntheir inferiority to lie in the absence of a controlling center. The\nlower Annulosa is composed of a series of ring-like segments. Each\nring has its own nerve ganglia linked by connecting nerves, but \u201cvery\nincompletely dependent on any general controlling power. Hence it\nresults that when the body is cut in two, the hinder part continues to\nmove forward under the propulsion of its numerous legs; and that when\nthe chain of ganglia has been divided without severing the body, the\nhind limbs may be seen trying to propel the body in one direction,\nwhile the fore limbs are trying to propel it in another.\u201d\n\nAs we move up in the animal world the nervous system culminates in\na centralized brain, and similarly as society becomes more complex,\ngovernment appears.\n\nAnd now the great apostle of the non-interference of government with\nthe life of society is driven into the glaring contradiction of\ncontending that the highest animal organization is that in which the\nbrain, which he compares to government in society, interferes and\ncontrols most effectively.\n\n\u201cStrange as the assertion will be thought,\u201d he says, \u201cour Houses of\nParliament discharge, in the social economy, functions which are in\nsundry respects comparable to those discharged by the cerebral masses\nin a vertebrate animal.\u201d Strange indeed! Especially to Mr. Spencer\u2019s\ndisciples.\n\nThen Mr. Spencer discovers that the kind of brain activity displayed by\nthe highest animals best compares with that form of government called\n\u201crepresentative.\u201d\n\nHe says: \u201cIt is the nature of those great and latest-developed ganglia\nwhich distinguish the higher animals, to interpret and combine the\nmultiplied and varied impressions conveyed to them from all parts of\nthe system, and to regulate the actions in such a way as duly to regard\nthem all; so it is in the nature of those great and latest-developed\nlegislative bodies which distinguish the most advanced societies, to\ninterpret and combine the wishes of all classes and localities and to\nmake laws in harmony with the general wants.\u201d\n\nIt would seem from this that, a society whose government represents\nonly the interests of a handful of the community while the great\nmajority are uncared for, is suffering from social paralysis.\n\nBefore we pass to the next chapter where we shall examine the position\npresented in \u201cThe Man Versus The State\u201d we will observe one break in\nSpencer\u2019s analogy which he fails to notice.\n\nWhen the brain of an animal is wrecked the animal dies; it has no\nchoice. But when the brain of a society fails to represent the\ninterests of the mass of the people who compose that society, or when\nthe social brain runs amuck and invites disaster, society may take its\nchoice, it may elect to die or--it may get a new brain.\n\n\n\n\nIX.\n\nSPENCER\u2019S INDIVIDUALISM.\n\n\nIndividualism is dead.\n\nAs a theory, it has gone with Stahl\u2019s \u201cPhlogiston,\u201d Cuvier\u2019s\n\u201cCataclysms,\u201d and Goethe\u2019s \u201cTheory of Colors\u201d to the museum of history.\nThe revolution in philosophy, which covers the nineteenth century and\nreaches back into the closing decades of the eighteenth, has met and\noverthrown it at every point. Today it lingers in the world of thought\na reminiscence of a prior stage of social development, as the imperfect\nremnant of the \u201cthird eyelid\u201d remains in our bodies a surviving\nrudiment, a legacy that links us with our extinct ancestors of the\nsilurian age.\n\nThe greatest name ever thrown into the scales for Individualism and\nagainst Socialism is that of Herbert Spencer. He has the reputation of\nhaving been the greatest Individualist of all times.\n\nMany people, including Socialists, who are not familiar with the works\nof Spencer wonder how it comes to pass that the great evolutionary\nphilosopher could defend a theory so obsolete and anti-evolutionary as\nIndividualism. With this problem solved, Individualism is practically\ndisposed of--at least, its greatest prop is gone.\n\nAll careful students of the works of the \u201cSynthetic\u201d philosopher,\neventually recognize the dual personality of Mr. Spencer; the \u201cDr.\nJekyll\u201d of evolution, and the \u201cMr. Hyde\u201d of Individualism.\n\nThe last chapter dealt mainly with the former; this chapter will treat\nchiefly of the latter.\n\nMr. Spencer\u2019s chief utterances against what he conceived to be\nSocialism and in favor of Individualism are to be found in a volume\nof four essays entitled, \u201cThe Man Versus the State.\u201d In this book\nMr. Spencer complains bitterly of the rapid extension of government\ninterference in the England of his day. He declares these \u201cActs of\nParliament\u201d to be a greater and greater restriction of the individual\nrights of the citizen.\n\nHere are a few of the Acts which Spencer denounced: An Act directing\nthe Board of Trade to record the draught of sea-going vessels leaving\nport, and another to fix the number of life-boats and the life-saving\nappliances such vessels should carry. An Act making illegal a mine\nwith a single shaft: The inspection of white lead works to compel the\nowners to provide overalls, respirators, baths, acidulated drinks,\netc., for the workmen: Providing for the inspection of gas works:\nMaking compulsory regulations for extinguishing fires in London;\nTaxing the locality for local drainage; That bake-houses should have\na periodical lime washing, and a cleaning with soap and hot water at\nleast once in six months; To secure decent lodgings for persons picking\nfruit and vegetables for public consumption; To provide free compulsory\neducation and public schools; The Public Libraries Act; All the Factory\nActs limiting child labor or enforcing the protection of dangerous\nmachinery; The Preservation of Seabirds Act; The establishment of\nstate telegraphy; Proposals to feed children; Government endowment of\nscientific research; etc.\n\nAll these measures, and many others of similar nature, excited the\nindignation of the greatest prophet of Individualism because, forsooth,\nthey modified somebody\u2019s right to do as he pleased about something.\nLuckily for England, Mr. Spencer and a handful of his individualist\ndisciples stood alone, while the electorate carried these laws through\ntheir highest tribunals.\n\nOne can imagine the \u201cjoy of living\u201d in an individualist arcadia\nfashioned after Mr. Spencer\u2019s own heart. A working man would be able to\ntake up the occupation of a sailor. He could embark on the rotten old\ntub of some greedy shipowner, insured for many times its value, loaded\nto the gunwales and sure to sink when it got out of sight of land to\nwhere the water was a little rougher than plate glass. Of course he\nwould be living under a system of \u201cvoluntary co-operation\u201d and \u201cfreedom\nof contract\u201d and if he didn\u2019t wish to go to sea he could stay at\nhome and--starve. There would be very little work in port unloading\nships, as so many of them would never return to be unloaded. When the\ninsurance money was paid the shipowner could give a banquet and hold\nforth on the individual right of the sailor to get drowned in the\ninterests of commerce without the government meddling about life boats\nand other expensive and nonsensical appliances.\n\nIf he preferred to work on \u201cterra firma\u201d he might get a job in a mine\nwith only one shaft which in case of firedamp would be converted into a\nfurnace. Then as there would be no way to get out, no socialistically\ninclined person would be able to dispute his individual right to stay\nin. If he preferred the white lead industry he might \u201cget in\u201d there,\nand there being no respirators, baths, or acidulated drinks he could\nbe a physical wreck in a year and a corpse in two. Or he might try the\ngasworks and, there being no inspectors, there would be nothing to\ninterfere with his individual right to be asphyxiated in an oven or\nroasted in a retort.\n\nAs wages would be small, unions not being individualist institutions,\nhe might get a cheap room in the top of an hotel without fire escapes,\nin a town with no fire engines. He could live cheaply on bread from\nbakehouses that never knew lime washings and had not seen hot water\nor soap for over six months, and eat fruit and vegetables handled by\npeople who were not troubled with decent, let alone sanitary, lodgings.\n\nHe would have the liberty to stay at manual labor as there would\nbe no public schools or libraries to assist him to qualify for any\nprofession such as, for instance, journalism. This would, no doubt, be\na blessing in disguise, for if he became a writer, instead of following\nthe brilliant example of Mr. Spencer, he might misuse his powers to\nthe detriment of the race by advocating the limitation, or even the\nabolition, of child labor. If he married he might be at liberty to sew\non his own buttons, his wife having left her fingers among the cogs of\nuncovered machinery.\n\nSuch would be the social heaven, operated on the principles of\nthe \u201cManchester\u201d school of politics, which mark the high-water of\nIndividualism, and of which Herbert Spencer was the chief apostle.\n\nCompare this attitude of mind with that of the Utopian Socialist,\nRobert Owen, over whom Spencer had the advantage of the lapse of a\nperiod of seventy years. In 1815 Owen convened a large number of cotton\nmanufacturers at Glasgow, Scotland, to consider the state of the\ncotton trade which was then in great distress. To that conference he\npresented two proposals; one to help the masters, the other to benefit\nthe workers. The first was that they should petition parliament for\nthe repeal of the tariff on raw cotton; the second that they should\nrequest parliament to shorten the working hours, and otherwise improve\nthe conditions of workers in the mills. The first proposal carried\nunanimously, but the one on which Owen\u2019s heart was set, was not even\nseconded.\n\nKnowing as he did the terrible condition of the English working class\nof that period, the callous brutality of these rapacious masters roused\nhim to irony and defiance. He delivered an address to the conference\nwhich he had printed and spread broadcast in every corner of the\ncountry.\n\nThis is how the lion turned on the jackals:\n\n\u201cTrue indeed it is that the main pillar and prop of the political\ngreatness and prosperity of our country is manufacture, which, as\nnow carried on, is destructive of the health, morals, and social\ncomfort of the mass of people engaged in it. It is only since the\nintroduction of the cotton trade that children, at an age before they\nhave acquired strength or mental instruction, have been forced into the\ncotton mills--those receptacles, in too many instances, for living,\nhuman skeletons, almost disrobed of intellect, where, as the business\nis often now conducted, they linger out a few years of miserable\nexistence, acquiring every bad habit which they may disseminate\nthroughout society. It is only since the introduction of this trade\nthat children and even grown people were required to labor more than\ntwelve hours in a day, not including the time allotted for meals. It is\nonly since the introduction of this trade that the sole recreation of\nthe laborer is to be found in the pothouse or ginshop, it is only since\nthe introduction of this baneful trade that poverty, crime, and misery\nhave made rapid and fearful strides throughout the community.\n\n\u201cShall we then go unblushingly, and ask the legislators of our country\nto pass legislative acts to sanction and increase this trade--to sign\nthe death warrants of the strength, morals, and happiness of our\nfellow-creatures, and not attempt to propose corrections for the evils\nwhich it creates? If such be your determination, I, for one, will not\njoin in the application--no, I will, with all the faculties I possess,\noppose every attempt made to extend the trade that, except in name,\nis more injurious to those employed in it than is the slavery of the\npoor negroes in the West Indies, for deeply as I am interested in the\ncotton manufacture, highly as I value the extended political power of\nmy country, yet knowing as I do, from long experience both here and\nin England, the miseries which this trade, as it is now conducted,\ninflicts on those to whom it gives employment, I do not hesitate to\nsay: Perish the cotton trade, perish even the political superiority of\nour country, if it depends on the cotton trade, rather than that they\nshall be upheld by the sacrifice of everything valuable in life.\u201d\n\nCompare these noble utterances of the great-souled utopian Socialist\nwith the sneers at the most unfortunate element of the working class\nwhich disfigure the pages of \u201cThe Man Versus the State\u201d and let the\nIndividualist take whatever satisfaction he can get from the contrast.\n\nBut Spencer\u2019s reactionary views did not stop with opposition to every\nattempt to alleviate the condition of the wealth producers of his day.\n\nAs an individualist, he would tolerate no \u201cgovernment interference\u201d\nwith the rights of individuals who wished to shoot sea-birds which they\ncould not get, but which usually flew out to sea, and died floating,\nwith a broken wing. Why should these lofty minded people be interfered\nwith? Were they not the prototypes of our own Roosevelt, who is always\nready to manifest his love of nature by killing everything in sight?\n\nWhat a pity these individualists were not allowed to have the British\ntelegraph system managed by a gang of financial pirates like the owners\nof the \u201cWestern Union\u201d and the \u201cPostal\u201d of this country.\n\nState repression of knowledge having proved such a bad thing in the\nmiddle ages, state encouragement of learning must of course, needs\nbe equally bad in the nineteenth century. \u201cGovernment endowment\nof research,\u201d indeed! Not for the individualist champion. And yet\nEngland holds the world\u2019s honors in biology, because of Darwin,\nwhose opportunity came through the government exploration of \u201cThe\nBeagle,\u201d and Huxley, who began his brilliant career with the government\nexpedition of the \u201cRattlesnake.\u201d As England led the world in the middle\nof the century so France had held first place during its first quarter,\nand that because the French government sent out scientific expeditions\nto the tropics, which, on their return loaded down the shelves of the\n\u201cJardin des Plantes\u201d with specimens which made possible those greatest\nof her thinkers, Lamarck, Cuvier and Geoffrey St. Hilaire.\n\nWhen the feeding of school children is thrown as a charge against\nSocialism, we are proud to plead guilty. It is our glory that the\nonly cities in the world that have no starving children behind school\nbenches are those cities such as Lille, Ivry, Montlucon, etc., with a\nSocialist majority in the town councils, which removed the disgrace.\n\nSuch then were the arguments of this flag bearer of Individualism, who\nhas supplied the opponents of Socialism with objections these thirty\nyears. His individualist philosophy is now so thoroughly discredited as\nto call for no answer were it not for the fact pointed out by Huxley,\nthat erroneous ideas do not die just simply because they have been\nkilled.\n\nIt is not necessary to wheel into position the heavy artillery of Marx\nto overthrow this house of cards. Spencer is a sufficient reply to\nSpencer.\n\nHere is the great contradiction. Spencer, the great biologist, says\nthe brain is to the animal what the Government is to a society. (1)\nThe more effectively and completely the brain controls the members\ncomposing the animal body, the higher its place in the organic scale.\n(2) The less effectively and completely the Government controls the\nmembers of the body politic the better will be the society.\n\nSociological literature has failed to produce any individualist\nchampion able to reconcile this astonishing contradiction. And so there\nit stands plainly before the eyes of Mr. Spencer\u2019s readers.\n\n\u201cSuppose,\u201d says Professor Huxley, \u201cthat, in accordance with this\nview, each muscle were to maintain that the nervous system had no\nright to interfere with its contraction except to prevent it from\nhindering the contraction of another muscle; or each gland, that it\nhad a right to secrete, so long as its secretion interfered with no\nother; suppose every separate cell were left free to follow its own\n\u201cinterest\u201d and laissez-faire lord of all, what would come of the body\nphysiological? The fact is that the sovereign power of the body thinks\nfor the physiological organism, acts for it, and rules the individual\ncomponents with a rod of iron. Even the blood corpuscles can\u2019t hold a\npublic meeting without being accused of \u201ccongestion\u201d--and the brain,\nlike other despots whom we have known, calls out at once for the use of\nsharp steel against them.\u201d\n\nThis is the rock upon which Spencerian Individualism struck and went to\npieces, independently of those great forces, which I shall point out,\nthat made for its disintegration.\n\nThese two contradictory positions are the upper and nether millstones\nbetween which the individualistic philosophy of Anarchism is ground\nto powder. Socialists are not stupid enough to argue that because\nsociety can get along without a king therefore an orchestra should have\n\u201cno head.\u201d We are also able to distinguish between \u201cthe state\u201d which\nSocialism will abolish, and the \u201cadministration of industry\u201d which it\nwill establish.\n\nEvery step forward in modern thought has emphasized the importance\nof that factor called \u201cenvironment.\u201d The evolution philosophy is an\nenvironment philosophy. Lamarck, the greatest pioneer of modern\nscience, makes a change of environment the prime necessity of organic\ndevelopment. Darwin makes environment the selective factor in \u201cNatural\nSelection\u201d and in this he is supported by every living biologist of\nnote. Karl Marx paralleled these great advances by discovering that\nevery political philosophy takes its origin in some particular economic\nenvironment. This is true of Socialism and Individualism alike.\n\nAnd so if we wish to understand the historic significance of\nIndividualism we must go back to the period of its birth and examine\nthe social processes of production of that day. This takes us back to\nthe early years of the 19th century.\n\nIn the closing half of the 18th century, laborers individually owned\nthe small and crude tools by which they made their living. In this\nstage of social development the laborer owning the tools he used,\nappropriated the result. There was here no contradiction and whatever\nnotion of justice is supposed to inhere in the \u201cindividual ownership\nof the means of production\u201d derives its whole force from the economic\nstatus of the worker of this period. If that status had remained\nunchanged, Socialism would never have been heard of. But in the process\nof evolution the truth and justice of the 18th century became a lie\nand a social wrong in the 19th.\n\nThis transformation was wrought by the development of machinery. It\nwas impossible for every individual worker to own a large machine, and\nso some men became toolless wage laborers employed by the owners of\nmachinery. This is the beginning of the present labor problem and here\narises the struggle in the world of ideas between the philosophy of\nIndividualism and that of Socialism.\n\nLet us examine the vital change which had taken place even before we\nreach the middle of the last century. Now, one man uses the tools, but\nanother owns them and appropriates the result. And this is the economic\nfoundation of the class war between the exploited wage worker and the\nexploiting capitalist.\n\nBut the individualist theories proper to the 18th century, and its\nmode of wealth production, passed over into the 19th where their\neconomic justification had ceased. As the fortunate individual owners\nof machinery found themselves growing rich at a great rate apart from\ntheir own individual efforts, they became enthusiastic supporters of\n\u201cIndividualism\u201d and eventually founded the \u201cManchester\u201d school of\npolitics, which had Herbert Spencer as its chief mouth-piece and Henry\nGeorge as a somewhat belated trumpeter.\n\nIn this heyday of Individualism the \u201crate of profit\u201d was at its\nhighest, one Lancashire cotton spinner boasting of one thousand per\ncent. But the social hell in which the English working class of this\nperiod lived is without parallel in modern times. Its system of child\nlabor, as recorded in the government blue books as well as already\nshown by Owen, was indescribably horrible, but the manufacturers were\nopposed to \u201cgovernment interference\u201d and the individualist philosophy\nand its bogey of \u201cpaternalism\u201d was their craven plea.\n\nWith the grouping of the workers in factories production became\nsocialized, and now came this contradiction, production was social\nwhile ownership and appropriation were individual. The Socialists of\nthat period rightly maintained that society should either go back in\nproduction to the individual form so as to be in harmony with the\nexisting individual form of ownership and appropriation, or it should\nadopt social ownership and social appropriation to harmonize with the\nalready existing social production.\n\nBut the wheel of history never revolves backward, and the latter\nsolution is destined ultimately to prevail. Social evolution has\nalready carried us far in that direction. With the organization of\ncapital individual ownership disappeared and class ownership has taken\nits place. The struggle of the 20th century is not a struggle between\nindividuals, it is a struggle between classes, and so Individualism has\nlost its meaning--it is defunct.\n\nWith the disappearance of the economic foundation of Individualism,\nand the overthrow of the philosophic superstructure erected thereon,\nall its watchwords have lost their power to charm. Free trade, free\nlabor, free contract, free competition; all these are the lingering and\nbelated echoes of a day that is gone.\n\n\u201cFree trade\u201d was the protest of the rising capitalist class against\nthe trammels placed upon its commerce by the feudal regime. Now it\nappears in a new role; it is the cry of the small capitalist against\nthose \u201cpredatory trusts\u201d which discovered that competition is not the\nlife but the death of trade, and are using protection to destroy their\nweaker fellow-robbers.\n\n\u201cFree labor\u201d was the demand of the capitalist that the serf should be\nreleased from the soil in the country so that he might be available\nfor exploitation in the factory, in the city. In England an attempt\nhas been made to give this defunct phrase a new lease of life by the\n\u201cFree Labor Association\u201d an organization which had this in common with\nour \u201cCitizen\u2019s Alliance\u201d that it sought to encourage the dear good\nworkingman to keep out of the \u201ctyrannical\u201d labor unions.\n\n\u201cFreedom of contract\u201d or, as it is sometimes called \u201cVoluntary\nCo-operation\u201d never existed in capitalist society and has never been\nanything but a grim joke or a plain lie. Where is the freedom or\nvoluntaryism of the worker who must work for what he can get or starve\nlike a dog in the street?\n\nThe effects of \u201cfree Competition\u201d in England in the early days of\ncapitalism, where it was most free, were such that none but a fiend\nwould wish them recalled. The \u201cmight have been\u201d halo with which present\nday individualists seek to surround this principle, is a midsummer\nnight\u2019s dream that never had any existence in the world of reality\nand can never be realized, except in the phantasmogoria of their own\nideological imaginations.\n\nIndividualism in all its forms has become an anachronism. The deified\nego of Max Stirner, which imagines itself sitting enthroned on the\npinnacle of the universe, directing the motions of the planet Jupiter\nby crooking its little finger, is an ideological phantasm, which\nhas no connection with the solid earth. The flowery exhortations of\nEmerson, to live a noble life in ignoble surroundings, is an invitation\nto attempt what is, for the mass, impossible. Any philosophy which\nproposes to save the individual without transforming his social\nenvironment stands condemned by modern science.\n\nIf, with a society more highly organized than any known to history, we\nstill have anarchy in the production and distribution of our wealth,\nthe remedy is, not less social organization, but more. If with all our\ndental science toothache still exists, the cure is not fewer dentists,\nbut more dentistry. The need of to-day is not less society, but more\nsocial organization. There is no hope in going back to the small\nproduction of sixty years ago as Hearst and Bryan desire. Increasing\nthe number of bandits in any society is not the concern of their\nvictims. The golden age of labor is not in the past but in the future.\nThe labor problem cannot be solved by going back to the scramble of the\nhog-pen or the methods of the jungle. There is no succour in flying at\neach other\u2019s throats in the name of business.\n\nFreedom cannot live in a society rent by class wars. Her conquests are\nonly possible with a humanity united to subdue the cosmic world by\nwhich it is interprenetrated and surrounded.\n\nHappily for us, society evolves independently of anybody\u2019s opinion.\nOur opinions follow blindly and gropingly in the rear. The opinions of\nindividualists do not manufacture social laws, according to certain\nethical requirements; they interpret and explain those laws which\nthey discover in operation. The fundamental question is not, \u201cis\nIndividualism better than Socialism?\u201d but \u201cIs society moving in the\ndirection of the one or the other?\u201d\n\nTo answer this question it is only necessary to compare the world of\nto-day with that of ten or even five years ago. America moves steadily\ntoward Socialism, while Europe advances in great leaps. Every civilized\ncountry tells the same story, and the recent development of Finland and\nAustria astonished the world.\n\nSociety moves forward, as irresistibly as the ocean tides, and it\nmoves in a direction predicted by those greatest thinkers of this or\nany age--the men who linked their lives with the blood and the tears\nand the struggles of half a century in the greatest cause that ever\nthrobbed in the brain of man--the cause of Socialism.\n\n\n\n\nX.\n\nCIVILIZATION--WARD AND DIETZGEN\n\n\nOne of the darkest curses that has fallen on the working class is its\nbeing shut out of the wondrous world of modern thought. The great\ngates of the Temple of Science are clanged in its face, and its mind\nis fed on the theological garbage of the Middle Ages. In the school,\nthe press, and especially the pulpit, ideas are gravely presented as\nserious truths, which are known by all university men to be thoroughly\nexploded lies.\n\nA twentieth century newspaper will brazenly devote a whole page to\npresenting, with pictorial illustrations, alleged recently discovered\nproofs of the truth of that Genesis legend which has done such loyal\nservice to the ruling class by stultifying the brains of its victims.\nThese hypocritical displays are never publicly contradicted, although\nevery man with the least smattering of scientific knowledge, including\nthe editors, knows how utterly false they are. These worthies indulge\nin a sly grin and lower one eyelid, for it is generally understood\namong them that the great donkey--the working class--will only consent\nto carry everybody\u2019s burdens in addition to its own, just so long as it\nis kept in childish ignorance of everything it ought to know.\n\nAnd this is not all. Now that a great body of workingmen are discarding\nthese ancient lies, and groping for those great truths that contain\nthe germs of their redemption, the official savants, true servants of\nthe ruling class, twist and warp their own science in order to make it\ncontradict every working class idea.\n\nThis attitude of the time serving intellectual lackeys of the\nprofessorial chairs has brought with it another blighting curse--it has\nmade a considerable number of working men suspicious of modern science\nitself. It is an old-time tragedy, this breaking with one\u2019s best friend\nbecause of the groundless calumnies of an interested enemy.\n\nThis terribly mistaken antagonism to science has unfortunately found\nits way, in some measure, into the Socialist movement, though happily,\nincreasing acquaintance with Socialism\u2019s classic literature is breaking\nit down. In this connection the following passage from the pen of\nIsador Ladoff is very pertinent:\n\n\u201cRationalistic modern Socialism is based, not exclusively on certain\neconomic theories and maxims, as some narrow-minded \u2018Socialists pure\nand simple\u2019 think and would fain make us believe, but on the broad\nfoundation of modern science and thought. The economic theories\npeculiar to modern Socialism are derived from the application of the\nresults of the achievements of modern knowledge and philosophy to the\nfield of social economics. The trouble with the \u2018Socialists pure and\nsimple\u2019 is in the extreme limitation of their mental horizon. They\nhappen to know, or rather imagine they have mastered Marxian economics,\nwhile modern science and philosophy remains to them a sealed letter.\nThat is why they get irritated whenever and wherever they meet in\nthe socialistic press an article containing something else than the\neverlasting parrot-like repetitions of pseudo-socialistic commonplaces\nand shibboleths. Every attempt to present to the attention of the\nreaders of socialistic publications, glimpses of the radiant world of\nscience and philosophy, leading up to socialistic ideas and ideals in\nall their world-redeeming significance, appears to the simpleminded\nand superstitious simon-pure Socialists as an attack on somebody or\nsomething, as a heresy and heterodoxy of some kind. To such people\nthe religion of science is the religion of ignorance and vice versa,\nignorance is their religion and science.\u201d\n\nThe use of science and philosophy by the ruling class as a pretence for\nthe appropriation of the lion\u2019s share of the wealth produced by labor\ndoes not prove that workingmen should abandon philosophy as useless\nto their cause. On the contrary, as Dietzgen says: \u201cPhilosophy is a\nsubject which closely concerns the working class,\u201d and he adds: \u201cThis,\nof course, does by no means imply that every workingman should try to\nbecome acquainted with philosophy and study the relation between the\nidea and matter. From the fact that we all eat bread does not follow\nthat we must all understand milling and baking. But just as we need\nmillers and bakers, so does the working class stand in need of keen\nscholars who can follow up the tortuous ways of the false priests and\nlay bare the inanity of their tricks.\u201d\n\nIt is quite clear that working men, instead of underestimating the\nvalue of mental training, should remember what a terrible weapon it\nhas proved in the hands of their enemies. It is precisely because the\nworkers have lacked this weapon, that in spite of their overwhelming\nnumbers and physical strength, they have always been outwitted. \u201cThe\nemancipation of the working classes,\u201d concludes Dietzgen, \u201crequires\nthat they should lay hold on the science of the century.\u201d\n\nLester F. Ward, whose theories we shall now examine, warns us against\nthe erroneous supposition \u201cformerly quite prevalent,\u201d that \u201cscience\nconsists in the discovery of facts.\u201d He maintains that \u201cthere is not a\nsingle science of which this is true, and a much more nearly correct\ndefinition would be that science consists in reasoning about facts.\u201d\n\nWe may recall here that learned body which sneered at Darwin as \u201ca\nmere theorizer\u201d and conferred its honors upon an unknown man who had\ncollected some facts about butterflies but had carefully avoided\n\u201creasoning about them.\u201d Of course the value of this reasoning is that\nit leads to the discovery of those laws or generalizations which\nreveal the relation of the facts to each other, and thus enables us to\nappreciate their real significance.\n\nTherefore we might venture to push the matter a little further and\ndefine science as the discovery of laws. But for the uniformity and\ninvariability of physical phenomena, astronomy would be impossible. The\ndiscovery of evolution laid the foundations of modern biology. Dalton\u2019s\ntheory of atoms and Lavoisier\u2019s permanence of matter emancipated\nchemistry from the superstitions of alchemy.\n\nWard is therefore on solid ground when he maintains that \u201cthe\nindispensable foundation of all economic and social science\u201d consists\nin the fact that \u201call human activities and all social phenomena\nare rigidly subject to natural law.\u201d It is just the difficulty of\ndiscerning uniform laws amidst the highly complex phenomena of society\nthat delays the proper development of sociology, although, as we have\nseen, this difficulty is materially augmented by the class interests at\nstake.\n\nAgain, just as biology was hindered in its growth by the doctrine\nof special creations and, still earlier, Copernican astronomy was\nchecked by the geocentric theory, so now the progress of sociology is\nrestrained by the doctrine of divine providence. Believers in divine\nprovidence are well represented by the Hindoo who in his lesson on\nEnglish composition spoke of his father as having \u201cdied according to\nthe caprice of God which passeth all understanding.\u201d\n\nIt is precisely because \u201ccaprice\u201d can not be understood and cannot\ntherefore, be made the basis of prevision, that it can not be admitted\ninto the domain of science. Science, as Starcke well said, is founded\non \u201cfaith in the universality of causation.\u201d If the activities of men\nand the policies of nations are not ruled by cause and effect a science\nof society is impossible.\n\nAnd yet, contends Ward, it was the very adoption of this \u201caltogether\nsound abstract principle\u201d that \u201cled to the greatest and most\nfundamental of all economic errors, an error which has found its way\ninto the heart of modern scientific philosophy, widely influencing\npublic opinion, and offering a stubborn resistance to all efforts to\ndislodge it.\u201d\n\nAnd now we come to the keynote of Ward\u2019s whole system and at the same\ntime to the point where he completely breaks with the biological\nsociologists. The error, which Ward attributes to them all, the\nrefutation of which is the main object of his work, is described as\nfollows:\n\n\u201cThis error consists in practically ignoring the existence of a\nrational faculty in man, which, while it does not render his actions\nany less subject to natural laws, so enormously complicates them that\nthey can no longer be brought within the simple formulas that suffice\nin the calculus of mere animal motives. This element creeps stealthily\nin between the child and the adult, and all unnoticed puts the best\nlaid schemes of economists and philosophers altogether aglee. A great\npsychic factor has been left out of the account, the intellectual or\nrational factor, and this factor is so stupendous that there is no room\nfor astonishment in contemplating the magnitude of the error which its\nomission has caused.\u201d\n\nThis is the foundation stone of Ward\u2019s sociology. With great care he\nelaborates the vital difference between the economy of nature with its\nblind forces, and the economy of society with its mental arrangement of\nmeans to ends. He marshals that well-known array of facts which prove\nthe tremendous waste continually going on in the natural world.\n\nAccording to M. Quatrefages, two successive generations of a single\nplant-louse would cover eight acres. A large chestnut tree in\nJune contains as much as a ton of pollen. Considering the size of\npollen-grain the number on such a tree would be next to inconceivable.\nBurst a puff-ball and there arises from it a cloud that fills the air\nfor some distance around. This cloud consists of an almost infinite\nnumber of exceedingly minute spores, each of which should it by the\nrarest chance fall upon a favorable spot, is capable of reproducing the\nfungus to which it belongs.\n\nAnd yet in spite of all this enormous reproductivity the population\nof these species remains practically stationary. Ward objects very\nstrongly to this insane waste of nature being set up as a model for\nhuman society, and he is entitled to the sympathy of Socialists who\nhave always protested against the planless anarchy of capitalist\nproduction, which however, bad as it is, can hardly be considered a\ncircumstance compared with the random waste of nature.\n\n\u201cThe waste of being,\u201d says Asa Gray, \u201cis enormous, far beyond the\ncommon apprehension. Seeds, eggs, and other germs, are designed to be\nplants and animals, but not one of a thousand or a million achieves\nits destiny.\u201d And Gray quotes with approval from an article in the\nWestminster Review: \u201cWhen we find that the sowing is a scattering at\nrandom, and that for one being provided for and living, ten thousand\nperish unprovided for, we must allow that the existing order would be\nconsidered the worst disorder in any human sphere of action.\u201d\n\nWard, of course, takes the same view: \u201cNo one will object to having\nnature\u2019s methods fully explained and exposed, and thoroughly taught\nas a great truth of science. It is only when it is held up as a model\nto be followed by man and all are forbidden to \u2018meddle\u2019 with its\noperations that it becomes necessary to protest. I shall endeavor\nstill further to show that it is wholly at variance with anything that\na rational being would ever conceive of, and that if a being supposed\nto be rational were to adopt it he would be looked upon as insane.\u201d\n\n\u201cSuch,\u201d says Ward, \u201cis nature\u2019s economy. How different the economy of\na rational being! He prepares the ground, clearing it of its vegetable\ncompetitors, then he carefully plants the seeds at the proper intervals\nso that they shall not crowd one another, and after they have sprouted\nhe keeps off their enemies whether vegetable or animal, supplies water\nif needed, even supplies the lack of chemical constituents of the soil,\nif he knows what they are, and thus secures, as nearly as possible, the\nvigorous growth and fruition of every seed planted. This is the economy\nof mind.\u201d\n\nAnd now Ward presents a truth that is very familiar to all\nSocialists--that the difference between an animal living in a state of\nnature and man living in human society, is that man is a tool using\nanimal. This use and development of tools is due to that application of\nreason called the inventive faculty, which no other animal possesses.\n\u201cThe beaver indeed, builds dams by felling trees, but its tools are its\nteeth, and no further advantage is taken than that which results from\nthe way the muscles are attached to its jaws. The warfare of animals is\nwaged literally with tooth and nail, with horn and hoof, with claw and\nspur, with tusk and trunk, with fang and sting--always with organic,\nnever with mechanical weapons.\u201d\n\nAnd because man can invent tools and improve them he has an immense\nadvantage over other animals. It is this advantage which the biological\nsociologists have overlooked. But this advantage makes an incalculable\ndifference. The fundamental difference is, that \u201cthe environment\ntransforms the animal, while man transforms the environment.\u201d\n\nWhat, then, is civilization? It is human development beyond the animal\nstage. What it its chief factor? It is psychic--the application of\n\u201cmind\u201d to the problems of life.\n\nNow we see still further how Ward is irresistibly driven, by the\nlogic of his position, to Socialist conclusions. He sees that another\nstriking difference between irrational nature and rational society is\nthat nature is competitive, while society is increasingly co-operative.\nAnd this co-operation is due to the greater development of that psychic\nfactor, which is the chief instrument of civilization and leads men to\navoid waste.\n\nTurning now to \u201cPure Sociology,\u201d we are told that the subject-matter\nof sociology is \u201chuman achievement.\u201d When we ask, in what does this\nachievement consist, we are informed that: \u201cAchievement does not\nconsist in wealth. Wealth is fleeting and ephemeral. Achievement is\npermanent and eternal.\u201d\n\nAgain the sum total of the things which constitute achievement may be\nsummed up in the one word \u201cinventions.\u201d\n\nAchievement with Ward is another name for civilization. Page after\npage is given to an enumeration of its particulars,--music, painting,\npoetry, exploration, industry and many other things which we have\nnot space even to mention. The one thing that is vital here is that\n\u201cachievement,\u201d while it does not include perishable wealth, nor yet the\nactual, perishable machinery by which the wealth has been produced,\ndoes nevertheless undoubtedly include that something described by\nSocialists as the \u201cprocess of production.\u201d\n\nThis is of prime importance because now when we turn to Ward\u2019s \u201cApplied\nSociology,\u201d we find that not only achievement, but \u201cimprovement\u201d is the\ntheme of that branch of the science.\n\nAnd now listen to this great American sociologist, who has so far\noutstripped all his contemporaries as to be practically without\na rival, this thinker whose monumental works have gained him an\ninternational reputation; listen and compare what follows with the\nhocus-pocus that usually comes from the official chairs:\n\n\u201cThe purpose of applied sociology is to harmonize achievement with\nimprovement. If all this achievement which constitutes civilization\nhas really been wrought without producing any improvement in the\ncondition of the human race, it is time that the reason for this was\ninvestigated. Applied sociology includes among its main purposes the\ninvestigation of this question. The difficulty lies in the fact that\nachievement is not socialized. The problem, therefore, is that of the\nsocialization of achievement.\n\n\u201cWe are told that no scheme for the equalization of men can\nsucceed; that at first it was physical strength that determined the\ninequalities; that this at length gave way to the power of cunning, and\nthat still later it became intelligence in general that determined the\nplace of individuals in society. This last, it is maintained is now,\nin the long run, in the most civilized races and the most enlightened\ncommunities, the true reason why some occupy lower and others higher\npositions in the natural strata of society. This, it is said, is the\nnatural state and is as it should be. It is moreover affirmed that\nbeing natural there is no possibility of altering it.\n\n\u201cOf course all this falls to the ground on the least analysis. For\nexample, starting from the standpoint of achievement, it would\nnaturally be held that there would be great injustice in robbing those\nwho by their superior wisdom had achieved the great results upon\nwhich civilization rests and distributing the natural rewards among\ninferior persons who had achieved nothing. All would assent to this.\nAnd yet this is in fact practically what has been done. The whole\nhistory of the world shows that those who have achieved have received\nno reward. The rewards for their achievement have fallen to persons\nwho have achieved nothing. They have simply for the most part profited\nby some accident of position in a complex, badly organized society,\nwhereby they have been permitted to claim and appropriate the fruits\nof the achievements of others. But no one would insist that these\nfruits should all go to those who had made them possible. The fruits\nof achievement are incalculable in amount and endure forever. Their\nauthors are few in number and soon pass away. They would be the last to\nclaim an undue share. They work for all mankind and for all time, and\nall they ask is that all mankind shall forever benefit by their work.\u201d\n\nAnd so Ward\u2019s conclusion is that the greatness of the present consists\nin that mass of achievements called civilization, among which are those\ninventions which have so wonderfully increased the capacity of social\nlabor in its production of wealth. And the hope of the future lies in\nthe socialization of those achievements so as to make their rich fruits\nthe common heritage of all mankind. There are no Socialists who will\nquarrel with these conclusions.\n\nWe will now briefly compare this position with that of the great German\nthinker, Joseph Dietzgen, who at the international congress at The\nHague, in 1872, was introduced by Karl Marx to the assembled delegates\nwith these words: \u201cHere is our philosopher.\u201d Of course we shall only\ndeal with his theories here as they relate to the conclusions reached\nby Ward.\n\n\u201cAll exertion and struggle in human history\u201d says Dietzgen, \u201call\naspirations and researches of science find their common aim in the\nfreedom of man, in the subjection of nature to the sway of his mind.\u201d\n\nThis is, as we have seen, precisely Ward\u2019s idea of what constitutes\nthe substance of civilization.\n\n\u201cMan, to be sure,\u201d says Dietzgen, \u201cis still dependent on nature. Her\ntribulations are not yet all overcome. Culture has yet a good deal to\ndo; aye, its work is endless. But we have so far mastered the dragon,\nthat we finally succeeded in forging the weapon with which it can be\nsubdued; we know the way to tame the beast into a useful domestic\nanimal.\u201d\n\nWhat is this \u201cweapon\u201d which humanity has forged and which constitutes\nthe possibility of its salvation? \u201cThis salvation,\u201d says Dietzgen, \u201cwas\nneither invented nor revealed, it has grown of the accumulated labor\nof history. It consists in the wealth of to-day which arose glorious\nand dazzling in the light of science, out of human flesh and blood, to\nsave humanity. This wealth in all its palpable reality, is the solid\nfoundation of the hope of social-democracy.\u201d\n\nAnd here lest there should seem to be a plain contradiction between\nDietzgen and Ward, we will go further and see that Dietzgen, like\nWard, does not mean merely those items of wealth which happen to be in\nexistence in the shape of tangible commodities.\n\n\u201cThe wealth of to-day does not consist in the superb mansions,\ninhabited by the privileged of society, nor does it consist in their\ncostly apparel, or in the gold and precious stones of their jewelry,\nor in the heaps of goods peeping through the show windows of our great\ncities. All that as well as the coin and bullion in the trunks and\nsafes form but an appendix or, so to speak, the tassels and tufts,\nbehind which is concealed that great and real wealth--the rock on which\nour hope is built.\n\n\u201cWhat authorizes the people to believe in the salvation from long\nages of torture--nay, not only to believe in, but to see it, and\nactively strive for, is the fairy-like productive power, the prodigious\nfertility of human labor. In the secrets which have been wrung from\nnature; in the magic formulas by which we force her to do our wishes\nand to yield her bounties almost without any painful work on our\npart; in the constantly increasing improvement of the methods of\nproduction--in this I say consists the wealth which can accomplish what\nno redeemer ever could.\u201d\n\nAnd Dietzgen, like Ward, protests against this great legacy of history,\nthis vast accumulation of the results of the combined social labor of\na hundred generations, being the sole property of those \u201cwho never\nachieved anything!\u201d\n\nDietzgen, like Ward, sees that the great problem which confronts the\nrace is to break down those intolerable bars which prevent humanity\nfrom entering into its just inheritance.\n\nTo this great and culminating task man must bend all the powers of his\nmind. Now he has reached the point where the gates of liberty begin\nto yield and with one grand, united effort may be thrown wide open so\nthat all the sons and daughters of men may finish the long centuries of\nmisery and freely enter in.\n\nTo continue this senseless oppression longer would be the summit of\nstupidity.\n\n\u201cConsider the frugal needs of our people and at the same time the\nfertility of labor, and ask yourselves if mere instinct alone would not\nbe sufficient to teach us how to supply adequately our needs with the\nhelp of the existing means of production?\u201d\n\nTo make these \u201cmeans of production the property of society\u201d is then the\nproblem of Ward\u2019s applied sociology and Dietzgen\u2019s social democracy\nalike. According to both, this emancipation of the mass of the people\nfrom the last form of slavery is the one consuming task of civilization.\n\nAnd the psychic factor, the consciously reasoning brain of man is,\naccording to both, to be more than ever the instrument of \u201cachievement.\u201d\n\nTo Dietzgen especially, the time is rotten-ripe for the great change.\n\n\u201cThe salvation of humanity is involved in this question. It is so great\nand sublime that all other problems which time may bear in its folds\nmust wait in silence. The whole of old Europe is waiting with bated\nbreath the fulfilling of the things which are coming.\n\n\u201cOh, ye short-sighted and narrow-minded, who can not give up the fad\nof moderate, slow, organic progress! Do you not perceive that all your\ngreat liberal passions sink to the level of mere trifling, because the\ngreat question of social salvation is on the order of the day? The calm\nprecedes the tempest. History stands still, because she gathers force\nfor a great catastrophe.\u201d\n\n\n\n\nTHE LEWIS LECTURES.\n\n\nThis book, =Evolution, Social and Organic=, is the first volume of a\nseries of lectures to which we expect to make notable additions in the\nfuture. We can at this time definitely promise two volumes, which will\nbe made up from the lectures delivered by Mr. Lewis at the Garrick\nTheater during the winter and spring of 1908.\n\n=Ten Blind Leaders of the Blind.= This will in all probability be the\nsecond volume of the Lewis Lectures, and we expect to publish it in May\nor June. It will consist of critical studies of the theories of such\nreformers, philosophers and moralists as Benjamin Kidd, Henry George,\nDr. Schaeffle, Thomas Carlyle, Auguste Comte and Immanuel Kant.\n\nIt must not be imagined that Mr. Lewis in these lectures is merely\nattempting to refute these thinkers, nor that he would disparage the\nservice that each in his time has rendered. On the contrary his aim is\nto give the reader as clear a comprehension as possible of what each\nof these men has achieved. And he furthermore shows how the outlook\nof each was limited by the economic environment from which flowed\nthe mental atmosphere in which he lived, so that it would have been\nunreasonable for us to expect from these writers any other conclusions\nthan those at which they actually arrived. Understanding these\nconditions we can better understand how to meet the arguments of those\nstill influenced by the outgrown ideas which are perhaps best stated in\nthe writings of the leaders here considered.\n\n=Socialism and Modern Thought.= This is planned for the third volume of\nthe series, and will probably be ready in the summer or fall of 1908.\nIt will be a direct supplement to this present volume, =Evolution,\nSocial and Organic=, which explains the scientific basis on which\nsocialism rests. The second volume, as we have shown, is taken up with\nan examination of rival theories. The third volume will restate the\nprinciples of socialism and show how they are applied to the pressing\nproblems of today. A lecture on \u201cThe Economic Interpretation of\nHistory\u201d will show how Marx\u2019s historical method throws a search-light\non the darkest places in which sociological students have hitherto\ngroped. One on \u201cThe Positive School of Criminology\u201d will tell how the\nsocialist scholars of Italy have revolutionized the once hopeless\nscience of crimes and punishments, and have established certain very\ndefinite and very fruitful propositions, showing all the while that\ncrime must last while capitalism lasts. In \u201cThe Latest Word of Science\nand Philosophy--Monism,\u201d Mr. Lewis will show how the clearest thinkers\nin the modern socialist movement have arrived at a conception of the\nuniverse that is broad enough to take in all reality, and to show the\nrelation of the facts of mind to the facts of matter. We have room to\nmention here but one more lecture, and that shall be \u201cThe Inevitability\nof the Triumph of Socialism.\u201d\n\nEach of these volumes will be uniform with the present one; advance\norders are solicited. The price, postage included, will be fifty cents\neach.\n\n=The Art of Lecturing.= Mr. Lewis had persistently been urged to teach\na class in the art of lecturing, but the many demands on his time made\nthis quite out of the question, and as the best way to satisfy his\nfriends, he wrote a series of brief articles for the Chicago Daily\nSocialist, each article containing some practical suggestions for young\nsocialist speakers, each suggestion the direct fruit of the author\u2019s\npersonal experience. These articles at once attracted wide attention,\nand long before they had all appeared, there was an unmistakable demand\nfor their publication in book form. That is why this book is issued.\nThere is nothing else quite so helpful for the young man or woman who\nexpects to lecture on the socialist platform. And many others who have\nno thought of lecturing will enjoy reading the book, because it brings\nthe reader into such close touch with the personality of a man worth\nknowing. Paper, 25c, postpaid.\n\n=The Standard Socialist Series.= This volume is a fair sample of the\ntwenty-five socialist books already published in this library. In\ntheir selection, the object of the publishers has been in so far as\npossible to include all the greatest works by European and American\nsocialists that could possibly be brought within the limits of a\nfifty-cent volume. Of course the series includes the =Communist\nManifesto,= by Marx and Engels. This, by the way, is published in\ntwo editions, in one of which is also printed Liebknecht\u2019s work on\nsocialist tactics entitled =No Compromise=, while the other includes a\nversion of the Manifesto in Esperanto, the new international language,\nas well as the English version. The Standard Socialist Series also\nincludes Marx\u2019s =Revolution and Counter-Revolution=, and three of\nthe most important works of Frederick Engels, =Socialism: Utopian\nand Scientific=, =The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the\nState=, and =Feuerbach: The Roots of the Socialist Philosophy=. As for\nliving socialist writers, France is represented in this library by\nLafargue\u2019s =Social and Philosophical Studies= and =The Right to Be Lazy\nand Other Studies=, Germany by Kautsky\u2019s =The Social Revolution= and\n=Ethics and the Materialist Conception of History=, Italy by Ferri\u2019s\n=The Positive School of Criminology=, Russia by Plechanoff\u2019s =Anarchism\nand Socialism=, Belgium by Vandervelde\u2019s =Collectivism and Industrial\nEvolution=, England by Blatchford\u2019s =Britain for the British=, and\nAmerica by the writings of Isador Ladoff, Roberts Rives LaMonte, A.\u00a0M.\nSimons, John Spargo, Ernest Untermann, John M. Work and others. Full\ndescriptions of all these books, together with an account of our other\nbooks at higher and lower prices and suggestions as to the choice of\nbooks, together with some interesting propaganda matter, will be found\nin the current issue of the Socialist Book Bulletin, mailed free to any\none requesting it.\n\n=How to Get Books at Cost.= This Bulletin also explains our\nco-operative plan for supplying books at cost. The publishing house\nwhich issues this volume is not owned by any capitalist. It is owned\nby 1,900 socialist working people, each of whom has subscribed ten\ndollars to help publish more socialist books. No dividends are paid;\nthe advantage to the stockholder is that instead of paying fifty\ncents for a book like this one he pays twenty-five cents if he calls\nat our office for it, or thirty cents if it is mailed to him. More\nstockholders are needed to provide the capital for publishing more\nbooks, and readers of this book are urged to co-operate with us to the\nextent of buying a share at ten dollars. We do not care to sell more\nthan one share to one subscriber, but any one having more than ten\ndollars to invest can get four per cent interest on it and have the\nmoney returned to him at any time on thirty days\u2019 notice. These terms\nare better than are offered by Chicago banks, and the lender has the\nsatisfaction of knowing that his money is used for the interests of the\nworking class and not against them.\n\n\n  Charles H. Kerr & Company (Co-operative)\n  264 Kinzie Street, Chicago\n\n\n\n\nTranscriber\u2019s Notes\n\n\nPunctuation and spelling were made consistent when a predominant\npreference was found in this book; otherwise they were not changed.\n\nSimple typographical errors were corrected; occasional unbalanced\nquotation marks repaired.\n\nInconsistent hyphenation has not been changed.\n\nOn nine pages, there was extra space between paragraphs, but these\nappeared to be the way the printer setup the text, rather than content\nbreaks intended by the author, so they have been ignored in this eBook.\n\nThe last six pages summarize other volumes in the Series of which\nthis book is a part. Those pages originally were numbered 1-6 but are\nnumbered here as 201-206.\n\nPage 19: \u201cVasca Da Gama\u201d was printed that way.","title":"Evolution Social and Organic","tradition":"philosophy-ethics","translated_text":null,"word_count":38028}