SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM. S77 



SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM/ 



By Professor OSCAE SCHMIDT, 



OF THE UNIVERSITY OF STEASBURG. 



I MUST assume it to be generally known that in last year's Congress 

 of German Naturalists and Physicians, held at Munich, a prominent 

 member incidentally referred to the points of contact between Socialist 

 Democracy and Darwinism, as also to the momentous and redoubtable 

 consequences which might thence ensue. These words of certainly well- 

 meant admonition were received with delight by all those who in any 

 event can not tolerate the doctrine of descent, and who accordingly 

 heartily approved of making Darwinism responsible for the most ex- 

 citing social phenomenon of the time. 



It is, of course, all right enough if certain representatives of Socialist 

 Democracy think they can with the aid of Darwinism add force to their 

 opinions ; but they jumble together doctrines which either are irrele- 

 vant, or which mutually exclude one another. 



This fact, indeed, is recognized by another portion of the Socialist- 

 Democratic party, who hold that the socialistic idea must have sup- 

 planted the Darwinian principle as applied to the human race, before 

 the new form of society can be realized and made to stand. 



The political economists have now for more than a century been 

 studying the " Struggle for Life " in its bearings on the weal or woe of 

 mankind^ yet not until the advent of Darwin did they consider the 

 problem understandingly. Under what forms individuals and classes com- 

 pete with one another ; in what way this struggle is to be ennobled for 

 the benefit of the race — these and other like questions are agitated on 

 all sides, as witness one work among many, namely, A, Lange's thought- 

 ful book, " On the Labor Question " (" Ueber die Arbeiterfrage "). It 

 is not, therefore, with this well-known point of contact with Darwinism 

 that we have to do, but with the special application of ostensibly Dar- 

 winian results to the justification and the execution of the Socialist- 

 Democratic programme. 



Although it has been raining " Quintessences of Socialism " for the 

 instruction of the public, nevertheless we must briefly explain how far 

 Socialist Democracy, as realized in the future, purports to be the ulti- 

 mate term of a natural development. 



Having passed through the period of absolute Inculture, a period 

 which might be roughly characterized by community life in troops and 

 minor family groups under the leadership of strong male individuals, 

 traces of which are found in the mammoth and reindeer caves, man 

 next entered the less rude condition of the hunter and the nomad where- 



' Translated from the " Deutsche Rundschau," by J. Fitzgerald, A. M. 



