CHAPTER VII. 



; FOR LIFE " AND THE " CLASS 

 STRUGGLE." 



Darwinism has proved that all the mechan- 

 ism of animal evolution is reduced to the 

 struggle for existence between individuals 

 of one species, on the one hand, and between 

 different species in the whole world of living 

 beings, on the other. 



In the same way all the mechanism of social 

 evolution has been reduced by Marxian social- 

 ism to the law of the struggle of the classes. 

 This theory does not give us only the secret 

 motive power and the sole positive explanation 

 of the history of humanity, it give us also the 

 ideal ancj, rigid norm which disciplines politi- 

 cal socialism, and which saves it from the 

 elastic, vaporous, inconclusive uncertainties 

 of sentimental socialism. 



The history of animal life has only found its 

 positive explanation in the great Darwinian 

 law of the struggle for existence; it alone permits 

 us to determine the natural causes of birth, of 

 evolution and of the disappearance of veget- 

 able and animal species from palseontological 

 times to our days. In the same manner the 

 history of human life only finds its explanation 

 in the great Marxian law of the struggle. of the 

 classes. Thanks to it the annals of primitive 

 humanity, barbarous and civilised, cease from 

 being a capricious and superficial kaleidoscope 



