128 EVOLUTION, SOCIAL AND ORGANIC 



A recent Socialist writer said: *'Take two 

 babies together — the worker's baby and the 

 parasite's baby. There they are, both of them, 

 out of the great mystery. Examine their soft 

 little bodies. Do you see spurs on the one 

 and a saddle on the other? And yet, one is 

 to grow up a profligate loafer, and the other 

 a starved and beaten worker. One to rot at 

 the top ; the other to be stunted and oppressed 

 at the bottom." 



Of course these two babies would not be 

 equal, either actually or potentially, but is 

 that any reason why they should be given an 

 unequal start? How are we to find out which 

 is the best in any sense, if a multitude of op- 

 portunities open to the one are to be closed to 

 the other? 



And here Haeckel's implied parallel breaks 

 down once more. In nature the strong and 

 capable survive in the struggle for existence; 

 nature gives something like a fair field and 

 no favor. But in capitalist society, a puling 

 son of a rich father is coddled to maturity, 

 and reproduces others of his kind; while the 

 lusty child of a worker is murdered by poison- 

 ous milk, or debarred from marriage by low 

 wages. 



In nature, "fittest" does not mean best in 

 any moral sense, except indirectly, as that the 



