and children by modern capitalism, make the 

 biological conditions of the proletarian class 

 daily worse. * 



To that we must add that moral selection 

 in the wrong way which causes capitalism to- 

 day in the struggle waged with the proletariat 

 to favour the survival of men of servile 

 character, whilst it persecutes and tries to keep 

 in the shade men of strong character and all 

 those who do not seem disposed to bear the 

 yoke of the present economic order, f 



The lirst impression which we get from the 

 statement of all these facts is, that the 

 Darwinian law of natural selection is worth- 

 less, and is not found to apply to human society. 



I have maintained, and 1 maintain, on the 

 contrary, first, that these social selections of 

 backward tendency are not in contradiction 

 to the Darwinian law, and more, that they 

 serve as material for an argument in favour of 

 socialism. Socialism in fact will alone be able 

 to bring about a more beneficent working of 

 this inexorable law of natural selection. 



In fact the Darwinian law does not deter- 

 mine the survival of the best, but only of the 

 best adapted. 



* On this question can be consulted, outside demo- 

 graphic statistic, the abstracts worked out at Turin in 1879 

 by M. Pagliani, the present director general of the office 

 of Hygiene to the Ministry of the Interior, on the different 

 development of the human body, notably more backward 

 and more feeble among the poor than among the rich. 

 This fact shows itself less at the time of birth than in 

 infancy and later, that is to say as soon as the influence 

 of economic conditions makes its inexorable tyranny felt. 



t Turati, Selezione servile in Critica Sociale, i, June, 

 1894. Sergi, Degenerazioni umane, Milan, 1889. 



