SCIEXCE AND SOCIALISM. 589 



doctrine of development, a doctrine 'grounded on observation, into a 

 fiction of the imagination, for we have to do, not with Socialist Democ- 

 racy as such, but with its relation to Darwinism. 



The result of our investigation is, that Socialist Democracj'-, wherever 

 it appeals to Darwinism, has failed to understand that hypothesis ; that, 

 if it has understood it, it knows not how to draw from it any advantage 

 for itself ; and that it must deny the unalterable principle of Darwinism, 

 nameh", competition.* 



Such is an account of our relations to Socialist Democracy, a move- 

 ment whose gravity we look on as a sign of a diseased social state that 

 calls for help and salvation. 



It remains to define our position with respect to the views of a few 

 of the friends and counselors of the Socialistic movement who, ap- 

 proaching more nearly to the Darwinian point of view, look for the best 

 results for human progress to result from natural selection c(fter pres- 

 ent social ills have been cured. I refer in particular to Albert Lange. 

 That so eminent a student of human life should estimate at its true 

 value the struggle for existence which has come down to humanity 

 from the unconscious animal world, was to have been expected. He 

 well knew how little warrant there is for the exjoectation that the 

 " struggle for the more desirable position " will ever cease. But he 

 based his hope on the idea of liberty and equality, an idea that is slowly 

 developed with the developing reason, and which brings men together, 

 in spite of differences of race, or talents, or station. He hoped that the 

 laws of the conscious intelligence would, as time went on, gain the mas- 

 tery. He hoped for a deliverance to come in the very remote future 

 from a current of thought and feeling which would arise in the devel- 

 oped human mind, and which would run counter to the natural process 

 of differentiation and division. He hoped for a spiritualization of the 

 physical struggle into a peaceful contest, having for its object the good 

 of the race. It is therefore nothing new if in these days like views are 

 put forth by Socialist Democrats. 



In his work " The Labor Question," Lange has intimated that cer- 

 tain social evils are the results of artificial selection, and that these 

 might be corrected by a return to simpler natural conditions. If we 

 were to spin out this thought, as is done, for instance, by Dodel in his 

 "Neuere Schopfungsgeschichte " (1875, pages 145, 147), we might 

 readily persuade ourselves that under the social conditions now exist- 

 ing the principle of natural selection, indeed any purely natural de- 

 velopment, " comes into operation either not at all, or only to a limited 

 extent." Then it seems to be an infraction of the natural order, that 

 they who are born to station, so often, without personal worth or tal- 

 ents, monopolize, in virtue of their inherited wealth, the pleasures and 

 enjoyments of life, leaving for their descendants the same even path. 



' In the " Zukunft" (18'78, uhi supra) the competition of the future is narrowed down 

 to " a competitive struggle between natural gifts." 



