SCIENCE AND SOCIALISM. 585 



God, a sort of infallible bugbear under the guise of an Omnipotent Idea. 

 The whole thing is misty, mystic, supernatural, in no sense scientific, 

 least of all is it a Darwinian explication of facts. 



Daricinism holds the exact opposite of all this, maintaining that 

 development does not proceed according to ideas. Darwinism sees in 

 nature only forces, laws, causes, and effects. Ideas it must for the 

 present leave to the philosophers ; and, moreover, it has absolutely no 

 points of contact Avith the doctrine of ideas contained in the Socialist- 

 Democrat catechism. Hence, when the Socialist Democracy bases the 

 realization of its ideal on the fact that men who are conscious of the 

 impelling ideas must irresistibly push on the work, and so carries the 

 masses on into a belief in these ideas, it must itself be held responsible. 

 As for Darwinism, it gives no encouragement to such imaginings, and 

 hence must, in this respect, be simply indifferent for all, whether they 

 hate Social Democracy or whether they love it. 



But there is a category of scientific men who look on the origin of 

 species as a development of the higher out of the lower ; who find the 

 Darwinian principle insufficient ; who will have nothing unaccounted 

 for, and who therefore conceal their ignorance under such phrases as 

 " tendency to perfection " or " aiming at an end." I might also refer to 

 the " Philosophy of the Unconscious " — now, as I believe, in process of 

 decay — a philosophy which, whenever it knows not how to explain 

 anything, solemnly invokes the aid of its " Unconscious." Between 

 these muddled auxiliaries and the Socialist Democrat's " ideas which 

 govern revolutions and determine the re-formation of perverted con- 

 ditions," there exists an unmistakable though perhaps " unconscious " 

 relationship. 



There is, then, a point of contact between Socialist Democracy and 

 Darwinism ; but, as far as we have examined it, it is seen to rest on 

 erroneous suppositions and ignorance of the essence of the development 

 doctrine. So far we have found it concerned only with a few theoretical 

 propositions ; and we have had nothing to say about the practical 

 realization of the Socialistic idea, or of the doctrines which might 

 perhaps be borrowed from Darwinism to add to it strength. 



The Socialist Democrats are unanimous in expressing discontent 

 with tlie social conditions at present existing. But with respect to the 

 specific organization of society in the future their leaders are very 

 reticent. So much is certain, that the great mass of the workingmen, 

 who now have to sell their entire strength for wages that merely suf- 

 fice to support life, will in the future perform no so-called " unpaid 

 labor." They will have a share in those higher enjoyments the pre- 

 requisite condition of which is a higher mental development. Oppor- 

 tunity for attaining this is afforded every one in the Socialist-Democratic 

 state, by a considerable shortening of the hours of purely mechanical 

 toil, and by opening perfectly free schools of every grade. When the 

 whole population has been in this way refined, there is no longer 



TOL. XIV. — 38 



