with the "struggle for existence" and with the relations 

 that exist between "evolution and revolution." 



As for the first, five pages (96-100) are sufficient for 

 him to affirm, without supporting his affirmation by any 

 positive demonstration which is not merely an expression 

 of the same idea couched in different words, that the 

 Darwinian law of the struggle for existence has not 

 undergone, and will not undergo, any transformation 

 beyond that which will change the violent struggle of 

 competition (the struggle of skill and intelligence), and 

 that this law is irreconcilable with socialism, for it 

 necessarily exacts the sacrifice of the conquered, whilst 

 socialism would assure to all men material existence so 

 that they would not have to trouble about it. 



But my friend, Baron Garofalo, passes by in complete 

 silence the fundamental argument that socialists oppose 

 to the individualist interpretation which has been given 

 up till now of the struggle for life, and which still 

 influences some socialists so much as to make them think 

 the struggle for life is not true and that Darwinism is 

 irreconcilable with socialism.* 



Socialists, in fact, think that the laws of life are the 

 following, concurrent and inseparable in their action : 

 the struggle for existence and solidarity in the struggle 

 against natural forces. If the first law has an individual- 

 istic spirit, the second has one essentially socialistic. 



Now, in order not to repeat what I have written else- 

 where, it is sufficient for me to state here this positive 

 fact, that every human evolution is realised by an ever 

 increasing predominance of the law of solidarity' over 

 the law of the struggle for existence. 



The forms of the struggle change and become attenu- 

 ated, as I have stated, since 1883, and M. Garofalo 

 accepts this point of view when he recognises that the 

 muscular struggle tends always to become the intel- 

 lectual struggle. But he has only formal evolution in 

 view, he takes no account of its progressively attenuated 

 functional relation in face of the other parallel law of 

 solidarity in the struggle. 



Here intervenes this constant principle of sociology 

 that the social forms and forces always co-exist, but with 



* Professor Labriola has recently repeated, without proving it, this 

 assertion that socialism is not reconcilable with Darwinism. Sur le Mani- 

 feste de Marx it Ength in the Devenir social, June, 1895. 



It is however very strange that there are some socialists who think 

 that, under the pretext of a so-called irreconcilability between Darwinism 

 and socialism the simple solution of the difficulty is to anathematise 

 Darwinism. 



I believe, onjhe contrary, that it is more important to examine Dar- 

 winism from the point of view, not of its individualistic and false inter- 

 pretations, but in its positive spirit of biological variation, which is evidently 

 founded on universal variation at the same time that it is the base of economic 

 and social variation. 



