THE OFFSPRING OF SCIENCE 



ing. As it is, they onesidedly emphasize now 

 this, now that, forgetting the wider interrelations 

 of their subject, and this little shortcoming de- 

 feats all their efforts to disentangle themselves 

 from the difficulties of their semi-metaphysical 

 mode of reasoning. The tangle in the details 

 of Darwinism and Spencerianism will not be 

 straightened out, until a socialist Darwinian will 

 bring order out of this chaos, as Marx did out 

 of bourgeois political economy. 



This bourgeois handicap becomes especially ap- 

 parent, whenever the practical application of 

 scientific understanding comes into conflict with 

 the business organization of bourgeois society. A 

 drastic illustration of this fact is furnished by 

 the attempt to reform the department of crimi- 

 nology and introduce evolutionary methods into 

 the treatment of the insane. When the revolution 

 in psychology demanded a revision of the ideas 

 concerning the free will and personal responsi- 

 bility of criminals, the bourgeois criminologists 

 made vain efforts to bring their criminal codes 

 into accord with the new facts without under- 

 mining their own juridical foundation. This be- 

 came especially plain in Italy, where the ideas of 

 Beccaria acted as a ferment and led to the rise 

 of the so-called positive school of criminology, 



147 



