146 EVOLUTION AND SOCIAL PROGRESS 



When the information's doubtful, be no whit dismayed 



thereat, 

 Finding refuge in the sentence, " Tis an Open Secret 



That " 



You may search the very marrow of your controversial 



foes 

 With that phrase of cold disparagement, "As Every 



Schoolboy Knows." 



And a fraud will seem as pious as a missionary tract 

 With the prefatory label, "It Is an Undoubted Fact." 8 



Delightful illustrations of all this can be found 

 in countless books of sociology and science, not to 

 mention the Sunday supplements, where discus- 

 sions on evolution are likely to belong to the same 

 category as the loudly colored pictures of the 

 "funny page," though their results may be far 

 from ludicrous. 



The philosophy of Socialism is of course built 

 entirely upon this same unsubstantial foundation. 

 Karl Kautsky, considered in the official organ of 

 American Socialism as the foremost exponent of 

 Socialist morality, bases his volume on this latter 

 subject 6 almost exclusively upon the "social" con- 

 ditions existing in the animal world, upon the life 

 of the "man apes" and the herding beasts. The 

 use of tools on the part of the ape, which he il- 

 lustrates by the wielding of the branches of trees 

 in self-defense and the cracking of nuts with 

 stones, are said to denote the first approach to- 

 wards human development. "With the pro- 



J "Rules for Editorial Writers," in "The Mirthful Lyre." 

 "Ethics and the Materialistic Conception of History." 



