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80 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



further, in case its local position in the polypidorn is unfavorable for 

 taking in food, it is fed by the collective alimentary canal, into which 

 flows the surplus of the individual production. A still more compli- 

 cated social condition, with strict division of labor, is seen in the jelly- 

 fish known as the " Portuguese man-of-war." 



I call attention to these familiar facts in order to show that in the 

 animal kingdom communism and socialism are all the more pronounced 

 the lower the organization of the groups among which they appear ; 

 and that, on the other hand, wherever among the higher animals con- 

 ditions occur which savor of the socialistic principle, in the division of 

 the results of the collective production, the egoism of the individual 

 appears all the stronger, I do not at all mean hence to conclude that 

 the case can not be otherwise in human society. 



From the selflessness of the polyp to the egoism of the wolf is a 

 development. How this development has been brought about, and how 

 man must come under its action, Darwin teaches ; and Leopold Jacoby 

 tells us that the already quoted gospel of the Social Democracy, name- 

 ly, Marx's work on " Capital," is " a continuation and complement of 

 Darwin's ' Origin of Species ' and bis ' Descent of Man.' " 



This same opinion was expressed one year earlier in " The People's 

 State " (" Der Volksstaat," 1873, No. 31), and it is now our task to 

 examine into its ground. 



The only passage in which Marx himself speaks of any comple- 

 ment of Darwinism, though not in connection with his own researches, 

 but d propos of the need of a special history of technology, is where 

 he says : " Darwin has drawn attention to the history of natural tech- 

 nology, that is, the formation of plant and animal organs as produc- 

 tion-instruments for the life of animals and plants. Should not equal 

 attention be given to the history of the formation of the production- 

 organs of man in society, seeing that these organs are the material 

 basis of every special society organization ? " (" Capital," page 385.) 



But the scientific method, that of proving by facts the relations be- 

 tween phenomena, is employed by Marx ; and in my opinion he is in 

 the right when he protests against the supposition that his dialectic 

 method is at bottom Hegelian. But neither does he collect all the 

 facts — for example, he knows only on the one hand the oppressor and 

 the extortioner, and on the other their victims reduced to misery — nor 

 does he refrain from gratuitous assumptions, as for instance that of 

 the " Unpaid Labor," the most momentous of them all. Again, it hap- 

 pens that, from his not understanding the results of the doctrine of 

 development, the true and actual relations of sociology to Darwinism 

 are hidden from him. For example, he says that " in reality each spe- 

 cial historic mode of production has its own special and historically valid 

 laws of population. An abstract law of population holds for plants 

 and animals only in so far as man does not interfere." 



Engels, in the work already quoted (page 491), repeats a similar 



