internal wounds due to the daily increase of 

 physical and moral disease, or like a slow, 

 capillary, irrevocable infiltration into minds 

 freed from all prejudices and unable to satisfy 

 themselves with the personal advantages 

 procured by the orthodox "raking in" of 

 profits. 



But as theories, political or scientific, are 

 natural phenomena, and not the capricious 

 and ephemeral blossom of the free will of 

 those who make and propagate them, it is 

 evident that if these two currents of modern 

 thought have both been able to triumph over 

 the first and strongest opposition of scientific 

 and political conservatism, and if the phalanx 

 of their disciples is daily augmented, that of 

 itself is sufficient to prove I would almost 

 say by a law of intellectual symbiosis that 

 they are neither irreconcilable nor contra- 

 dictory. 



Moreover, the three principal arguments to 

 which the anti -socialistic reasoning of Haeckel 

 is substantially reduced, cannot be maintained 

 against the most elementary criticism nor the 

 most superficial observation of daily life. 



I. Socialism tends to an imaginary equality 

 of everybody and everything. Darwinism, on 

 the contrary, not only states, but explains the 

 organic reasons for the natural inequality 

 of the aptitudes and even of the needs of 

 individuals. 



'II. In the life of humanity, as in that of 

 plants and animals, the immense majority of 

 those who are born are destined to perish 



