34 



social regime although in infinitely less 

 proportions there will always be some 

 vanquished in the struggle for existence, there 

 will be the victims of feebleness, of disease, of 

 insanity, of nervous disorder, of suicide. We 

 can then assert that socialism does not deny 

 the Darwinian law of the struggle for existence. 

 It will, however, have this unquestionable 

 advantage that the epidemic and endemic 

 forms of human degeneracy will be completely 

 suppressed by the elimination of their principal 

 cause, the physical and, consequently, the 

 moral misery of the greatest number. 



Then the struggle for existence, whilst still 

 remaining the eternal impulsive force of social 

 life, will assume forms continually less brutal 

 and more humane intellectual forms ; its 

 ideal of physiological and psychical ameliora- 

 tion will be constantly raised, owing to the 

 vitalising effect of daily bread for body and 

 mind being assured to each person. 



The law of the " struggle for life " must not 

 make us forget another law of natural and 

 social Darwinism. Certainly many socialists 

 have given it an excessive and exclusive 

 importance just as certain individualists have 

 left it completely in oblivion. I mean the 

 law of solidarity which unites all living beings 

 of the same species for example, the animals 

 that live in a community in consequence of 

 the abundance of a common food (herbivora), 

 or even the animals of different species living 

 in a state which naturalists call symbiosic 

 union for life. 



