MARXISM and DARWINISM 



I. DARWINISM. 



Two scientists can hardly be named who have, 

 in the second half of the 19th century, dominated the 

 human mind to a greater degree than Darwin and 

 Marx. Their teachings revolutionized the conception 

 that the great masses had about the world. For dec- 

 ades their names have been on the tongues of every- 

 body, and their teachings have become the central 

 point of the mental struggles which accompany the 

 social struggles ot today. The cause of this lies pri- 

 marily in the highly scientific contents of their teach- 

 ings. 



The scientific importance of Marxism as well as 

 of Darwinism consists in their following out the theory 

 of evolution, the one upon the domain of the organic 

 world, of things animate; the other, upon the domain 

 of society. This theory of evolution, however, was 

 in no way new, it had its advocates before Darwin 

 and Marx; the philosopher, Hegel, made it even as 

 the central point of his philosophy. It is, therefore, 

 necessary to observe closely what were the achieve- 

 ments of Darwin and Marx in this domain. 



The theory that plants and animals have de- 

 veloped one from another is met with first in the 

 nineteenth century. Formerly the question, "Whence 

 come all these thousands and hundreds of thousands 

 of different kinds of plants and animals that we 



