92 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCEXT 



. more or less unlike ; how, then, can the problems 

 of life and their solution be alike for all ? The 

 more highly political life is organised, the more 

 prominent is the great principle of the division of 

 labour, and the more requisite it becomes for the 

 lasting security of the whole state that its members 

 should be variously distributed in the manifold tasks 

 of life ; and as the work to be performed by different 

 individuals is of the most various kind, as well as the 

 corresponding outlay of strength, skill, property, &c., 

 the reward of the work must naturally be also ex- 

 tremely Various. These are such simple and tangible 

 facts that one would suppose that every reasonable and 

 unprejudiced politician would recommend the theory 

 of descent, and the evolution hypothesis in general, as 

 the best antidote to the fathomless absurdity of ex- 

 travagant socialist levelling. 



Besides, Darwinism, the theory of natural selection 

 which Virchow aimed at in his denunciation, much 

 more especially than at transformation, the theory of 

 descent which is often confounded with it Darwin- 

 ism, I say, is anything rather than socialist ! If this 

 English hypothesis is to be compared to any definite 

 political tendency as is, no doubt, possible that 

 tendency can only be aristocratic, certainly not demo- 

 cratic, and least of all socialist. The theory of selec- 

 tion teaches that in human life, as in animal and plant 



