Oscar Schmidt and Haeckel at their head, 

 protested immediately ; and in order not to 

 add this grave political opposition to that 

 then raised against Darwinism from the 

 religious, philosophical, and biological schools, 

 they maintained that on the contrary the 

 Darwinian theory is in open and absolute 

 opposition to socialism. 



" If the socialists were prudent (wrote Oscar 

 Schmidt in the Ausland, 2jih November, 1877) 

 they would do all in their power to hush up 

 in silence the theory of descent, for this doc- 

 trine proclaims aloud that socialistic ideas 

 are impracticable." 



" In fact," said Haeckel, * " there is no 

 scientific doctrine that proclaims more openly 

 than the theory of descent, that the equality 

 of individuals, to which socialism tends, is an 

 impossibility, that this chimerical equality is 

 in absolute contradiction to the necessary 

 inequality of individuals existing as a matter 

 of fact everywhere. 



" Socialism demands for all citizens equal 

 rights, equal duties, equal wealth, equal 

 enjoyments ; the theory of descent establishes, 

 on the contrary, that the realisation of these 

 wishes is purely and simply impossible, that, 

 in human as in animal societies, the rights, 

 the duties, the wealth, the enjoyments of all 

 the associated members neither will, nor cap, 

 ever be equal. 



* Les preuves du transformisme. Reply to Virchow. 

 Paris, 1879. Translated Soury, pp. no, &c. 



