CHAPTER XIV. 



MARX COMPLETES THE WORK OF DARWIN AND 

 SPENCER CONSERVATIVES AND SOCIALISTS. 



It is to Karl Marx that the honour falls of 

 having given a scientific expression to these 

 logical applications of scientific experiment 

 in the domain of social economy. Undoubt- 

 edly the exposition of these truths is surrounded 

 in his case with a multitude of technical 

 details and of formulae apparently dogmatic ; 

 but cannot we say as much of the First 

 Principles of Spencer, and are not his luminous 

 passages on evolution surrounded by a mist of 

 abstractions on time, space, the unknowable, 

 etc. ? Up to the last few years a conspiracy 

 of silence has been formed round the masterly 

 work of Marx ; but now his name stands with 

 those of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer 

 to complete this scientific revolution which 

 stirs in the thrilling of a new intellectual 

 spring the civilising thought of the second 

 half of the igth century. 



The ideas by which the genius of Karl 

 Marx completed, in the domain of social 

 economy, the revolution wrought by science 

 are three in number. 



One is the discovery of the law of surplus 

 value. It gives us a positive explanation of 

 the accumulation of private property without 

 labour ; this law having a more particularly 

 technical character we will not insist upon it 



