153 

 APPENDIX I. 



A LETTER TO AN ITALIAN JOURNAL IN REPLY TO A 

 LETTER BY MR. HERBERT SPENCER WHICH 



IT HAD PUBLISHED. 

 SIR, 



I have read in your journal a letter of Mr. H. Spencer, 

 who, on some indirect information which has been sent 

 him on my book, "Socialism and Positive Science," is 

 "astonished at the audacity with which use has been 

 made of his name in defending socialism." 



Permit me to assure you that no socialist has ever 

 dreamed of making Mr. Spencer, who is certainly the 

 greatest of living philosophers, pass as a partisan of 

 socialism. And it is very strange that anyone should have 

 been able to make him believe that there exists in Italy 

 enough ignorance among writers, as well as among 

 readers, to misuse in such a grotesque fashion the name 

 of Herbert Spencer, whom all the world knows to be an 

 extreme individualist. 



But the personal opinion of H. Spencer is a different 

 matter from the logical consequence of the scientific 

 theories on unive'rsal evolution which he has developed 

 farther and better than any other man, but of which he 

 has not the official monopoly nor the power to prohibit 

 their free expansion by the labour of other thinkers. 



As for myself, in the preface to my book, I observed 

 that Spencer and Darwin had stopped half-way in the 

 logical consequences of their doctrines. But I have shown 

 that these doctrines themselves constituted the scientific 

 foundation of the socialism of Marx, the only man who, 

 whilst raising himself above the preceding sentimental 

 socialism, has scientifically disciplined and systematised 

 the statements of social facts, political conclusions, and 

 the changing method of tactics, whilst remaining revo- 

 lutionary in his aim. 



As for Darwinism, not being able to repeat here the 

 arguments which are already contained in my book, and 

 which will be developed in the second edition, it is 

 sufficient for me to recall as it is thought fit to have 

 recourse to arguments so little conclusive as an appeal to 

 personal authority that, among many others, the cele- 

 brated Virchow foresaw with great acuteness that 

 Darwinism led directly to socialism, and that the cele- 

 brated Wallace, a Darwinian, if there is one, is a 

 member of the English Land Nationalisation Society, 

 which stands for one of the fundamental conclusions of 

 socialism. 



And on the other side, what is the famous " class 

 struggle," which Marx revealed as the positive key of 

 human history, if not the Darwinian law of the "struggle 



