Social Evolution 475 



the struggle for existence. Marx himself, in Das Kapital, indicated 

 another analogy when he dwelt upon the importance of a general 

 technology for the explanation of this psychology : a history of 

 tools which would be to social organs what Darwinism is to the 

 organs of animal species. And the very importance they attach to 

 tools, to apparatus, to machines, abundantly proves that neither 

 Marx nor Engels were likely to forget the special characters which 

 mark off the human world from the animal. The former always 

 remains to a great extent an artificial world. Inventions change the 

 face of its institutions. New modes of production revolutionise 

 not only modes of government, but modes even of collective thought. 

 Therefore it is that the evolution of society is controlled by laws 

 special to it, of which the spectacle of nature offers no suggestion. 



If, however, even in this special sphere, it can still be urged that 

 the evolution of the material conditions of society is in accord with 

 Darwin's theory, it is because the influence of the methods of produc- 

 tion is itself to be explained by the incessant strife of the various 

 classes with each other. So that in the end Marx, like Darwin, 

 finds the source of all progress in struggle. Both are grandsons 

 of Heraclitus : 7roXe/i09 frar^p Travrcov. It sometimes happens, in 

 these days, that the doctrine of revolutionary socialism is contrasted 

 as rude and healthy with what may seem to be the enervating 

 tendency of " solidarist " philanthropy : the apologists of the doctrine 

 then pride themselves above all upon their faithfulness to Darwinian 

 principles. 



So far we have been mainly concerned to show the use that social 

 philosophies have made of the Darwinian laws for practical purposes : 

 in order to orientate society towards their ideals each school tries to 

 show that the authority of natural science is on its side. But even 

 in the most objective of theories, those which systematically make 

 abstraction of all political tendencies in order to study the social 

 reality in itself, traces of Darwinism are readily to be found. 



Let us take for example Durkheim's theory of Division of Labour 1 . 

 The conclusions he derives from it are that whenever professional 

 specialisation causes multiplication of distinct branches of activity, 

 we get organic solidarity implying differences substituted for 

 mechanical solidarity, based upon likenesses. The umbilical cord, as 

 Marx said, which connects the individual consciousness with the 

 collective consciousness is cut. The personality becomes more and 

 more emancipated. But on what does this phenomenon, so big with 

 consequences, itself depend ? The author goes to social morphology 

 for the answer : it is, he says, the growing density of population 

 which brings with it this increasing differentiation of activities. But, 



1 De la Division du Travail social, Paris, 1893. 



