Chapter III: Part 3

It would be impossible to conceive a better scientific justification of the French revolution than Cuvier’s theory presented. For many decades before that event these rising commercialists had groaned under the yoke of feudal dues and feudal restraints of trade. Nothing could be more to their wishes than a sudden social “cataclysm” that would destroy the feudal system with its trade despising and plundering nobility, and exalt its own trading class to fill the vacancy. And when this had been accomplished, and that same nobility had been sent to the guillotine, it was great consolation to have on Cuvier’s authority, that this method of sudden violence had no less a precedent than the methods of the Almighty in suddenly destroying the living things in his own universe.

Cuvier’s theory however, almost died with him, for the violent desires of the bourgeoisie were short lived. When it realized the completeness of its own victory, and that the next “cataclysm” would mean its own overthrow and the enthronement of some successor, cataclysms lost favor and were frowned down. Preachers of sudden and violent changes were now regarded as the enemies of society, and Cuvier’s once lauded theory of cataclysms was sneered at as a relic of the dark ages. What the capitalist class wanted now was peace, and long life, and above all, no disturbances.

And it was just at this point that Darwin came forward with a theory that seemed made to order. True this theory spoke of evolution and change, but the change was so slow it was impossible to notice it. A million years was as ten minutes to this theory, and if it took as long for one class in society to displace another, or for one social regime to succeed another, as it does for one species to develop from another, the capitalists and their heirs had nothing to apprehend for a thousand generations.

There was nothing sudden about this theory, quite the contrary. In fact the real difficulty was to see how anything managed to change at all.

As for that part of it which spoke of the survival of the fittest, what could be clearer than that these self-made men were themselves the fittest. It was, of course equally clear that the degraded working class, lacking the cleverness to rise, was destined to be eliminated as unfit, by the laws of nature.

For half a century this argument of slow evolution has done valiant service as an antidote for Socialism, and the present ruling class would like to retain it forever.

But no ruling class ever was or ever can be wholly omnipotent. The capitalists of to-day can no more hinder the process of social evolution, with its resulting march of ideas, than they can intercept gravitation or divert the tides. They are being driven blindly to their fate by social forces which are beyond their command.

They are in the midst of social powers which mock their puny efforts to administer. Contradictions arise which cannot continue. As soon as a capitalist country is over-stocked with wealth, poverty prepares to stalk abroad.

But amid all this confusion, something moves on, a something which we sometimes call the spirit of the age. Society grows restless and instinctively anticipates a coming change. A new class rises into prominence and begins to realize its strength and develop its intelligence.

The ruling class still proclaims its will, but cannot always execute it. Colorado, Idaho, and Haywood are proof of that. The mental development of this new class has reached the point where it has become an intellectual factor in the national life. Its voice is listened to by publishers of books. It establishes its own press. It publishes a literature of its own. It creates its own platform. It reaches into the future and demands control of its own destiny.

And now see how all this is reflected in the scientific world. It is no longer true that species require thousands of years for the simplest change. We are now informed that change takes place by sudden leaps. At one single step a new species appears and begins its existence. There is therefore, no longer anything in biological science to contradict the Socialist position that a new society may be born of a sudden revolution.

Mutation, the savants tell us, runs in periods, alternating with periods of apparent stability. Then if we are not supported we are at any rate not contradicted, when we assert that in social development, periods of economic evolution, with apparent social stability, are followed by periods of social revolution when the entire social superstructure is transformed.

It is no longer necessary to assume countless millions of years for the evolution of living forms. A plant enjoys a period of apparent stability, then it reaches a point where it “explodes” and gives birth to new species. If a plant, why not a society? At least there is nothing in the example of the plant that will furnish an argument against such an idea.

If the history of biological science for the last half a century were to be written by a Socialist, who had no scruples about wresting the record so as to support his Socialist theories, he would have nothing to gain by changing a single line.

There is nothing in that history to contradict us when we assert the probability or the certainty, of a social revolution. Who, that looks about him, can fail to see that death is plainly branded in the brow of the existing social order? Its legal, political, and financial institutions are tied together with rotten thread. It is already outliving its usefulness, and when it goes it will have few mourners. But millions will hail with joy that social mutation which will kindle the fires of human liberty, and create, if not a new Heaven, at least, a new earth.

VI.

KROPOTKIN’S “MUTUAL AID.”

Lamarck was the first to present the theory of Evolution in a thoroughly scientific manner. Then Darwin discovered “the great principle which rules the evolution of organisms”; the principle of “natural selection.” Then Weismann repudiated current ideas as to how the fittest “arrived,” or “originated,” and presented in their place a theory of his own, which is still under discussion. DeVries raised the question as to whether new species “arrive” by a gradual accumulation of tiny changes, or by sudden leaps--mutations--and demonstrated the latter by his experiments with the evening primrose.

And now comes Kropotkin with the question, “Who are the fittest?” What constitutes the fitness, which makes for survival? Are those organisms the fittest which are constantly waging a war of extermination against every other organism in the struggle for existence, or, are those the fittest which co-operate with each other in the preservation of the common life of all?

The raising of this question brings to light another striking instance of the influence of class interests on scientific thought. It is a matter of common observation that any class, struggling for what it conceives to be its own emancipation, looks to the past for justification and precedent. In the English speaking world there is a widely prevailing opinion that the Magna Charta, extorted from King John at Runnymede, is the foundation of modern liberty.

The French bourgeoisie, struggling to overthrow the feudal monarchy, sought its justification in that “state of nature” which a despotic monarchy was said to contravene. Thus writers like Rousseau idealized nature, representing it as comparatively perfect, and declared that a restoration of “natural rights” was essential to liberty. But when this same bourgeoisie had won its victory and enthroned itself, and instead of increasing the liberty, had in many respects, deepened the degradation of the mass of the French people, its ideas about the “state of nature” underwent a radical change. And this happened not only in France but wherever the bourgeoisie triumphed.

Now the “state of nature” was one of constant carnage; nature was “red in tooth and claw.” And this chamber of horrors was supposed to support the exploitation of labor, and countenance a brutalization of childhood that constitutes the blackest stain on human history. So strong was the swirl that Huxley was swept into it; but, although he maintained the “gladiatorial” view of nature, he repudiated the social atrocities which capitalist apologists such as Spencer sought to deduce from it. In later years, Spencer partially abandoned his premise as to the animal world but, strangely enough, kept it intact for primitive man.

For this view of nature as full of nothing but darkness and cruelty, where, as Hobbes had put it, there waged “the war of every one against everybody,” the great authority of Darwin was invoked. In fact, Darwin was supposed to be almost solely responsible for the theory, and its overthrow by Kropotkin was heralded by the uninformed as another of those “death-blows” of which Darwinism is thought to have received so many during the last quarter of a century.

Kropotkin, however, in his introduction, claims that the idea of mutual aid is “in reality, nothing but a further development of the ideas expressed by Darwin in the ‘Descent of Man’”. Darwin said: “Those communities which included the greatest number of sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring.” Kropotkin complains that Darwin did not sufficiently develop this idea, but over-emphasized the idea of “competition” for life, and this error, he insists, was further accentuated by his disciples. “It happened with Darwin’s theory,” he says, “as it always happens with theories having any bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it according to his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more.”

It is a mistake to suppose that Kropotkin denies the Darwinian principle of mutual struggle. “It is evident,” says he, “that no review of evolution can be complete unless these two dominant currents are analyzed. * * * The struggles between these two forces make, in fact, the substance of history.” He anticipates the objection that his work only emphasizes the principle of mutual aid by insisting that the principle of struggle has “already been analyzed, described, and glorified from time immemorial. In fact, up to the present time, this current alone has received attention from the epical poet, the annalist, the historian, and the sociologist.”

The main body of his book is a solid mass of evidence of the existence of mutual aid everywhere in the living world, from the lowest insects to the highest mammals; and from the first stone age to the twentieth century. It consists of eight chapters, the first two of which are devoted to “Mutual Aid among Animals.”

Here, the theory of the human origin of society is utterly demolished. Complex social arrangements, popularly supposed to be limited to ants and bees, are shown to flourish everywhere, especially among birds.

With the parrot mutual aid is developed to such an extent that Kropotkin places it “at the very top of the whole feathered world for the development of its intelligence.” The white cockatoos of Australia, in raiding a crop, mutually aid each other so shrewdly as to “baffle all stratagems” to thwart them. “Before starting to plunder a cornfield, they first send out a reconnoitering party which occupies the highest trees in the vicinity of the field, while other scouts perch upon the intermediate trees between the field and the forest and transmit signals. If the report runs ‘all right,’ a score of cockatoos will separate from the bulk of the band, take a flight in the air, and then fly towards the trees nearest to the field. They also will scrutinize the neighborhood for a long while, and only then will give the signal for general advance, after which the whole band starts at once and plunders the field in no time.”

Mutual aid is very conspicuous among pelicans. “They always go fishing in numerous bands and after having chosen an appropriate bay, they form a wide half circle in face of the shore, and narrow it by paddling towards the shore, catching all the fish that happen to be enclosed in the circle. On narrow rivers and canals they even divide into two parties, each of which draws up on a half circle, and both paddle to meet each other, just as if two parties of men dragging two long nets should advance to capture all the fish taken between the nets when both parties come to meet.”

Our familiar friend, the house sparrow, is not overlooked and is said to have practiced mutual aid to such an extent as to be recognized even by the ancient Greeks. Kropotkin quotes from memory, the Greek Orator who exclaimed: “While I am speaking to you a sparrow has come to tell other sparrows that a slave has dropped on the floor a sack of corn, and they all go there to feed on the grain.” Sparrows also maintain social discipline: “If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade.” Kropotkin presents a number of well authenticated observations of the great compassion and sympathy prevailing among those wild creatures, which are popularly supposed to be always flying at each others’ throats: J. C. Woods’ narrative “of a weasel which came to pick up and carry away an injured comrade;” Brehm, who “himself saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which had a wound several weeks old.” Captain Stansbury, on his journey to Utah, as quoted by Darwin, “saw a blind pelican which was fed, and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought a distance of thirty miles.”

From these and a multitude of similar cases Kropotkin concludes that while “no naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for life, carried on through organic nature, is the greatest generalization of our century, that struggle is very often collective, against adverse circumstances.”

Kropotkin in concluding his consideration of animals, immensely strengthens his position by pointing out various methods by which new species may develop or old ones disappear, without the operation of a deadly competition between individuals. “The squirrels, for instance, when there is a scarcity of cones in the larch forests, remove to the fir-tree forests, and this change of food has certain well known physiological effects on squirrels. If this change of habits does not last--if next year the cones are again plentiful in the dark larch wood--no new variety of squirrels will evidently arise from this cause. But if part of the wide area occupied by the squirrels begins to have its physical characters altered--in consequence of, let us say, a milder climate or desiccation, (drying up) which both bring about an increase of the pine forests in proportion to the larch woods--and if some other conditions occur to induce squirrels to dwell on the outskirts of the desiccating region--we shall then have a new, i. e., an incipient new species of squirrels. A larger proportion of squirrels of the new, better-adapted variety would survive each year, and the intermediate links would die in the course of time, without having been starved out by Malthusian competitors.”

Again: “If we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the winter through in the Steppes of Transbaikalia, we find them very lean and exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted not because there is not enough food for all of them--the grass buried under a thin sheet of snow is everywhere in abundance--but because of the difficulty of getting it from beneath the snow and this difficulty is the same for all horses alike. * * * We can safely say that their number are not kept down by competition; that at no time of the year they need struggle, for food and that if they never reach anything, approaching over-population, the cause is in the climate, and not in competition.”

After citing the rodents that combine to store food for the winter, or fall asleep about the time competition should set in; and the buffaloes which form immense herds to migrate across a continent to where food is plentiful; and beavers, which when they grow numerous, divide into two parties, and go, the old ones down the river, and the young ones up the river and avoid competition; after citing these and many others, he declares the mandate of nature to be: “Don’t compete!--competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it! * * * Therefore combine--practice mutual aid! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intellectually, and morally.”

The third chapter deals with “Mutual Aid Among Savages.” Here we meet the question as to whether the family is an ancient institution, antedating the tribe and clan or whether it appeared at a much later date as an outgrowth of the clan. Kropotkin takes the latter view as advocated by Morgan, Bachofen, Maine, Lubbock and Tylor, and rejects the former as presented by Starcke and Westermarck.

The savage of anthropological research is shown to be a very different creature from the blood-thirsty monster of popular tradition. “Sometimes he is a cannibal, it is true, but not often, and then it is closely associated with economic necessity, and is abandoned when food becomes plentiful.” The custom of leaving old men in the woods to die, is bad enough, but not so bad as supposed. They usually carry the old man with them in their migrations until he himself grows tired of being a burden and begs to be killed. When this point is reached, he is given more than his share of food, and left in the woods to die, because no one has the heart to kill him. Infanticide is practiced from the same motive which induces savages to take all kinds of measures for diminishing the birth-rate--they cannot rear all of their children. In times of plenty it disappears. It was when these customs were enveloped in a religious halo and preserved as sacred ceremonies, after all necessity for them had disappeared, that they attained their most revolting characters.

He believed in revenge but it was to be strictly measured by the offense. It must be an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth; not a head for an eye, or an eye for a tooth. He only killed his enemies, and he always, at all costs, defended the members of his own tribe. “Within the tribe everything is shared in common; every morsel of food is divided among all present; and if the savage is alone in the woods, he does not begin his meal until he has loudly shouted thrice an invitation to any one who may hear his voice to share his meal.”... “If he infringes one of the smaller tribal rules, he is prosecuted by the mockeries of the women.” “When he enters his neighbors’ territory he must loudly announce his coming, and if he enters a house he must deposit his hatchet at the entrance. If one shows greediness when spoil is divided all the others give him their share to shame him.” Scolding and scorning are greatly condemned. Their children are not very quarrelsome and very rarely fight. The most they may say, is, “Your mother does not know sewing,” or “Your father is blind of one eye.”

The savage identified his interests with those of his tribe; he was no individualist, and under no circumstances would he have consented to child labor.

When we reach the barbarians, who are considered in the fourth chapter, we enter the historical period. At first sight, mutual aid seems to be non-existent at this period. Here there seems to be nothing but battle and bloodshed. But the reason is not far to seek; it is because, until recently historians regaled us exclusively with what has been aptly called, “drum and trumpet history.” “They hand down to posterity the most minute descriptions of every war, every battle and skirmish, every contest and act of violence, every kind of individual suffering; but they hardly give any trace of the countless acts of mutual support and devotion which every one of us knows from his own experience * * * The annalists of old never failed to chronicle the petty wars and calamities which harrassed their contemporaries but they paid no attention whatever to the life of the masses, although the masses chiefly used to toil peacefully while the few indulged in fighting.”

But Sir Henry Maine in his work on the “Origin of International Law,” has fully proved that “Man has never been so ferocious or so stupid as to submit to such an evil as war without some kind of an effort to prevent it.” And he has shown how exceedingly great is “the number of ancient institutions which bear the marks of a design to stand in the way of war, or to provide an alternative to it.”

A pregnant suggestion is offered as to the causes of that great migration of barbarians which resulted in the overthrow of the Roman empire. “It is desiccation, a quite recent desiccation continued still at a speed which we formerly were not prepared to admit. Against it man was powerless. When the inhabitants of North-West Mongolia and East Turkestan saw that water was abandoning them they had no course open to them but to move down the broad valleys leading to the lowlands, and to thrust westward the inhabitants of the plains.” And so the one great war recorded of the barbarians, was thrust upon them by absolute physical necessity.

The barbarians had no social problem, for that private property in the means of life which constitutes the foundation of modern individualism, and from which the degradation and poverty of modern civilization results, was unknown among them. They were communists. The interest of one was the care of all. Nothing was owned privately until it reached the very point of consumption and not always then, as food was largely eaten at communal meals. This social form still survives especially in Russia, and Kropotkin says: “The sight of a Russian commune mowing a meadow--the men rivalling each other in their advance with the scythe, while the women turn the grass over and throw it up into heaps--is one of the most inspiring sights; it shows what human work might be and ought to be. The hay, in such case, is divided among the separate households, and it is evident that no one has the right of taking hay from a neighbor’s stack without his permission; but the limitation of this last rule among the Caucasian Ossetes is most noteworthy. When the cuckoo cries and announces that spring is coming, and that the meadows will soon be clothed again with grass, every one in need has the right of taking from a neighbor’s stack the hay he wants for his cattle. The old communal rights are thus reasserted, as if to prove how contrary unbridled individualism is to human nature.”

When the early Christians “had all things in common,” they were not reaching forward to modern Socialism; they were harking back to this primitive communism which shed its joy and plenty on the sons and daughters of men for a thousand generations. These barbarian communists were thorough democrats, and their folkmotes, where everybody gathered and had their say, were the only semblance of government they possessed, and so thoroughly were its decisions respected that no officers were needed to enforce them. They were also our superiors not only in refusing to work their children, but also in scorning to beat them. They said: “The body of the child reddens from the stroke, but the face of him who strikes reddens from shame.”

The two chapters on “Mutual Aid in the Medieval City” treat the guild as the chief manifestation of the principle during this period. A picture is presented, in some detail of the struggle of the free cities against the increasing encroachments of the centralizing states. The medieval cities are finally defeated, the guilds destroyed, but the indestructible principle of mutual aid takes on new forms and accommodates itself to new conditions.

This brings us to the closing chapters on “Mutual Aid Among Ourselves.” The first of these two chapters is devoted almost entirely to the mutual aid habits and institutions which still survive in the present day villages of Russia, Switzerland, France and Germany. The last chapter takes up really modern instances of the principle, the first and most important are the Labor unions and their strikes, Co-operative societies, Life-boat associations, Charitable organizations.

The illustration of this principle which is cited first after the Labor union is the Socialist movement. Kropotkin presents his conception of the Socialist movement as a manifestation of mutual aid in existing society in the following eloquent passage:

“Every experienced politician knows that all great political movements were fought upon large and often distant issues, and that those of them were the strongest which provoked most disinterested enthusiasm. All great historical movements have had this character, and for our own generation Socialism stands in that case. ‘Paid agitators,’ is, no doubt, the favorite refrain of those who know nothing about it. The truth however, is that--to speak only of what I know personally--if I had kept a diary for the last twenty-four years, the reader of such a diary would have had the word ‘heroism’ constantly on his lips. But the men I would have spoken of were not heroes; they were average men, inspired by a grand idea. Every Socialist newspaper--and there are hundreds of them in Europe alone--has the same history of years of sacrifice without any hope of reward, and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, even without any personal ambition. I have seen families living without knowing what would be their food tomorrow, the husband boycotted all round in his little town for his part in the paper, and the wife supporting the family by sewing, and such a situation lasting for years, until the family would retire, without a word of reproach, simply saying: ‘Continue; we can hold out no more!’ I have seen men, dying from consumption, and knowing it, and yet knocking about in snow and fog to prepare meetings within a few weeks from death, and only then retiring to the hospital with the words: ‘Now friends I am done; the doctors say I have but a few weeks to live. Tell the comrades I shall be happy if they come to see me.’ I have seen facts that would be described as ‘idealization’ if I told them in this place; and the very names of these men, hardly known outside a narrow circle of friends, will soon be forgotten when the friends too have passed away. In fact, I don’t know myself which most to admire, the unbounded devotion of these few or the sum total of petty acts of devotion of the great number. Every quire of a penny paper sold, every meeting, every hundred votes which are won at a Socialist election, represent an amount of energy and sacrifices of which no outsider has the faintest idea. And what is now done by Socialists has been done by every popular and advanced party, political and religious, in the past. All past progress has been promoted by like men and by a like devotion.”

VII.

A REPLY TO HAECKEL.

The revolt against “authority” has been carried to ridiculous extremes. The Manchester school individualist, Herbert Spencer, and the metaphysical egoist, Max Stirner, would alike agree to the reduction of all authority to the smallest possible residue. The most reckless of their disciples, having shut out from their thoughts all communication with the world of reality, would make it impossible for six men to pull effectively on a rope because five of them would be obliged to recognize the authority of the sixth, when he, at the proper moment, should call “Heave, ho.”

To thinkers of this order, music would be impossible. Who could imagine a radical individualist bowing to a waved stick and recognizing the highly centralized authority of the “leader.” The music of the logical, authority-repudiating individualist, would be the haphazard beating of the tom-tom of the East Indian, and not the highly regulated strains of a modern orchestra.

This folly is equalled, if not out-done, by those who refuse to recognize authority in science and thought. When a man claims to have a new and fundamental discovery in astronomy, and at the same time speaks slightingly of the researches of physicists such as Newton, Kant, and Laplace, it is fairly safe to conclude that you are listening to a fool who has nothing to say worthy of a second thought. Not until one has trodden every rung of the ladder which has been previously trodden, is he able to mount a step higher. And it is the performance of this task, wholly, or at least in the first part, that constitutes the one so doing an “authority.”

How often does one hear an addle-brained, know-nothing say: “I recognize no authority; I think for myself.” How shall one think without ideas? And how is it possible to obtain ideas apart from the acquisition of knowledge? And where can knowledge be obtained except from those who have it?

All “authority” in science and thought is founded on knowledge of the subject in question. Socialists quote Karl Marx as an authority on political economy, because his writings prove that he knew more about the production and distribution of wealth than any man of his century. Lavoisier is an authority in chemistry, because he know more about the composition of substances than any three of his contemporaries.

But much confusion has been wrought, by men of undisputed authority in their own field, pronouncing positive verdicts in departments where their opinions had no value. What a great composer has to say about the value of a certain note must be respectfully considered as being of importance, but, unless he has studied geology, his opinions on the probable origin or age of the Rocky Mountains will have no more value, and may have less than those of the policeman on the nearest corner.

An excellent example of the confusion which may arise in this way, was given to the world in 1877, at the Congress of Naturalists held at Munich in September of that year. At that time the naturalists of Europe were divided into two opposing camps, one accepting and the other rejecting the Darwinian theory of “natural selection.” The leaders of both divisions were Germans, though a preponderance of the Germans favored Darwin, whilst the French, still under the influence of, or agreeing with, Flourens, although he had been dead a decade, were almost unanimously opposed.

The honors of leading the fight for Darwinism, at the Munich Congress, fell to Haeckel, and on the 18th of September he threw down the gage in a brilliant address in which he defended the ideas of the great Englishman. Haeckel also advocated the teaching of evolution in the schools. The battle raged back and forth between the two armies, until Virchow, the great pathologist, dropped a bombshell in the Congress by boldly asserting: “Darwinism leads directly to Socialism.”

Here biological arguments ceased. The only thing in order was to clear the skirts of Darwinism of the terrible charge of being socialistic. Of course this task fell to Haeckel, and he was loyally assisted by Oscar Schmidt.

Writing in “Ausland” two months later Schmidt said: “If the Socialists were prudent they would do their utmost to kill by silent neglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically proclaims that the Socialist ideas are impracticable.”

Haeckel replied to Virchow at some length, and as that reply is rather difficult to obtain I will give it here in full as quoted by Ferri, and translated by Robert Rives La Monte:

“As a matter of fact, there is no scientific doctrine which proclaims more openly than the theory of descent, that the equality of individuals, toward which Socialism tends, is an impossibility, that this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.

“Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal possessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on the contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply impossible; that in human societies, as in animal societies, neither the rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of all the members of a society are or ever can be equal.

“The great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory of evolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the theory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an original unity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the complexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions of existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal. There must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities and the innate tendencies, which also vary more or less widely. In view of all this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?

“The more highly the social life is developed, the more important becomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisite it becomes for the stable existence of the state as a whole that its members should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks of life, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must be performed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength, talent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more and more, it is natural that the remuneration of this labor must also vary widely. These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me every intelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of the theory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution as the best antidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the Socialists.

“And it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in his denunciation, had in mind, rather than the mere metamorphic development, the theory of descent, with which it is always confused! Darwinism is anything rather than socialistic.

“If one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this English theory--which is quite permissible--this tendency can be nothing but aristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic.

“The theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small and privileged minority alone which succeeds in living and developing itself; the immense majority, on the contrary suffer and succumb more or less prematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every species of plants and animals, and the young individuals who issue from them. But the number of those who have the good fortune to reach fully developed maturity and to attain the goal of their existence is relatively insignificant.

“The cruel and pitiless ‘struggle for existence’ which rages everywhere through animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage, this eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings is an undeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittest is able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. The great majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destined to perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but one cannot deny or change it. ‘Many are called, but few are chosen!’

“The selection, the ‘election’ of these ‘elect’ is by absolute necessity bound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast multitude of beings whom they survived. And so another learned Englishman has called the fundamental principle of Darwinism ‘the survival of the fittest, the victory of the best.’

“At all events the principle of selection is not in the slightest degree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If then, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has, according to Virchow, for the statesman ‘an extraordinarily dangerous side’ the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations.”

And now let us turn to the closing pages of the second volume of Haeckel’s valuable work, “The History of Creation.” We shall find it interesting and instructive to observe the nature of the argument which he there uses with great effect against Virchow. Virchow had delivered his celebrated address at Berlin, which closed as follows: “It is absolutely certain that Man is not descended from apes.”

Haeckel takes this up, gives a resumé of the facts known to zoology on this point, and then winds up with the following: “In view of this state of affairs, we zoologists, recognized as authorities on the subject, may surely ask, How can many so-called anthropologists still maintain that there exists no sort of actual proofs of the ‘Derivation of Man from Apes’? How can Virchow, Ranke, and others, who are not zoologists, in the speeches they annually deliver at anthropological and other congresses, continue to declare that this ‘Pithecoid thesis’ is an empty hypothesis, an unproved assertion, and a mere dream of the philosophers of nature? How can these anthropologists still continue to ask for ‘certain proofs’ of this thesis when proofs with all the clearness that could be desired lie before them, and are unanimously recognized by all zoologists? As regards Virchow’s often quoted declarations against the Pithecoid thesis, they have obtained great favor in wide circles, only because of the high authority this famous naturalist enjoys in an entirely different domain of science. His ‘cellular pathology,’ his ingenious application of the cell-theory to the whole province of medicine, introduced a grand advance in that branch of science thirty years ago. This great and lasting service rendered by him has, however, no connection whatever with the unyielding and negative position which, unfortunately, Virchow persists in assuming towards the doctrine of evolution.”

It probably never occurred to Haeckel that the argument which he here uses to meet Virchow’s opposition to evolution, would serve quite as effectively as a reply to his own opposition to Socialism.

As regards Haeckel’s “often quoted declarations against” Socialism, “they have obtained great favor in wide circles, only because of the high authority which this famous naturalist enjoys in an entirely different domain of science. His biogenetic principle, discovered in embryology, “introduced a grand advance in that science thirty years ago. This great and lasting service rendered by him has, however no connection whatever with the unyielding and negative position which, unfortunately,” Haeckel “persists in assuming towards the doctrine of” Socialism.

Haeckel’s complaint that Virchow could not judge the merits of evolution because he was not a zoologist, is well taken. But the Socialist has as good or better right to assert that Haeckel was incapable of estimating the relationship of Socialism to Darwinism, for he certainly knew a good deal less about Socialism than Virchow knew of zoology.

This is precisely the trouble with Haeckel’s criticism of what he calls Socialism. Of the theories of Karl Marx and the modern scientific Socialists, he knew absolutely nothing. The Socialism he condemned had been abandoned by the Socialists themselves, nearly thirty years before his criticism was made.

“Absurd equalitarian notions,” granted; but they were not even the sole property of the utopian Socialists. They borrowed them from the bourgeois revolutionists of 1789. It was they who boasted of the equality they would set up. That equality, which, as Engels says, only “materialized in bourgeois equality before the law.”--“The equality before the law of all commodity-owners.” It was this struggling bourgeoisie that adopted as its catch-words, “liberty, fraternity, equality,” and applied them to a typical bourgeois use when they inscribed them above the entrances to French prisons.

A significant clause in the second sentence of Haeckel’s criticism is, “in human societies as in animal societies,” the duties, etc., of the members cannot be “equal.” The only possible point this could have as a criticism of Socialism, would be its use to deny the possibility of abolishing social class divisions. There is nothing to show whether Haeckel intended it to have such a specific application, but as any other application it might have could be in no way opposed to the Socialist position, I need only show its failure in that regard.

“Bee” society may be said to have class divisions, and it must be conceded that these classes cannot be abolished by anything that could, by any stretch of the imagination, be called “bee socialism.” But the reason for this is not far to seek and, when found, it makes any argument by analogy, against Socialism, impossible. Bee workers are “physiologically” incapable of discharging any other function in bee society. They are females, incapable of maternity. As a result of this the queen bee is obliged to shoulder the whole burden of the reproduction of the species, and she is specialized in this direction to such an extent, that she could not possibly be a worker. The drone, as the male breeder, is in the same fix, and the popular notion that they are useless loafers, has its origin in the bee custom of applying the boot, or something worse, to all superfluous members of the drone class.

“A hive of bees,” says Prof. Huxley, “is an organic polity, a society in which the part played by each member is determined by organic necessities. Queens, workers, and drones are, so to speak, castes divided from one another by marked physical barriers.”

Says Ernest Untermann in his fine chapter on this question, in “Marxian Economics”: “Every textbook on natural history describes the different orders. For instance, the societies of bees are ‘monarchies’, those of ants ‘republics’. But in either case, biological variation determines the form of these societies. Queen bees, drones, and workers are of organically different structure and equipped with different specialized organs. The queen bee is equipped only for the duties of conception and the laying of eggs. The drone cannot perform any other function but that of fertilizing the queen. The worker alone has organs for gathering flower dust, honey, and manufacturing wax.” Class divisions in bee society are therefore “biological” and not economic. But Haeckel’s comparison ignores this vital distinction. Before this argument can be used against the Socialist advocacy of class abolition, it must be shown that a queen cannot wash clothes with starvation as an alternative, and that a pleb woman could not wear a coronet, should her father invest in a busted duke.

True there are other animal societies which have no such biological division. But these have no private property in the means of life, and therefore no classes. Pelicans and crows recognize only three grounds as justification for idleness--infancy, old age and sickness or accident.

A recent Socialist writer said: “Take two babies together--the worker’s baby and the parasite’s baby. There they are, both of them, out of the great mystery. Examine their soft little bodies. Do you see spurs on the one and a saddle on the other? And yet, one is to grow up a profligate loafer, and the other a starved and beaten worker. One to rot at the top; the other to be stunted and oppressed at the bottom.”

Of course these two babies would not be equal, either actually or potentially, but is that any reason why they should be given an unequal start? How are we to find out which is the best in any sense, if a multitude of opportunities open to the one are to be closed to the other?

And here Haeckel’s implied parallel breaks down once more. In nature the strong and capable survive in the struggle for existence; nature gives something like a fair field and no favor. But in capitalist society, a puling son of a rich father is coddled to maturity, and reproduces others of his kind; while the lusty child of a worker is murdered by poisonous milk, or debarred from marriage by low wages.

In nature, “fittest” does not mean best in any moral sense, except indirectly, as that the practice of certain moral principles in animal societies may constitute, or add to, fitness. But in present society in a vast number of instances, fitness does not mean “best” even to the extent that such a word may be used in the natural world.

A real estate “shark” is a libel on the fish. An indispensable qualification in business is to have few scruples and be a first-class liar. Honesty and suicide are synonymous terms.

The statement that natural selection “favors aristocratic aspirations,” involves the same fallacy. It assumes that aristocrats are on top because of fitness to be there. Recent revelations in Berlin indicate that the aristocrats of Haeckel’s own country are “fittest” for the garbage can.

Haeckel’s main position is that “the struggle for existence” in nature is a justification for “competition” in society. To begin with, Kropotkin has shown that Haeckel grossly misrepresents nature when he speaks of “the cruel, pitiless ‘struggle for existence’ which rages everywhere throughout animated nature” and “between all living beings.” When this is used as a defense of present society, it is equal to saying that human society should seek its models among the lowest forms of organic life rather than the highest. Haeckel’s position was taken by Spencer and received the following clever reply from Prof. Ritchie: “The struggle among plants and the lower animals is mainly between members of the same species; and the individual competition between human beings, which is so much admired by Mr. Spencer, is of this primitive kind.”

Kropotkin says: “If we ask nature ‘who are the fittest, those who are continually at war with each other, or those who support one another?’ we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest.”

As to the desirability of that “pitiless struggle,” Huxley pertinently says: “Of all the shapes which society has taken, that most nearly approaches perfection in which the war of the individual against the individual is most strictly limited.”

Whatever may be the truth among the protozoa, we are safe in applying to society the statement of Ruskin: “Co-operation is always and everywhere the law of life; competition is always and everywhere the law of death.”

Human society eventually reaches a point of development where nature’s haphazard ways are interfered with, and man arranges means to an end. Professor Schiaparelli thought he saw canals on Mars, and inferred intelligent inhabitants. The difference in water-ways, between blind nature and a designing intelligence, is the difference between a rambling river and a straight canal.

Now human society has arrived at a stage where its consciousness of itself and the possibility of self-arrangement, becomes a factor. This is a tremendous step forward, and its future possibilities seem to be illimitable. Before this can be largely effective, however, it will be necessary to thoroughly understand all fundamental social laws.

We had no rod to rule the lightning until we knew the laws of its movement. There will be no real airship until we master the laws of aerial flight. Socialism solves the social problem, not because it has, but because it is, an explanation of the laws of social development in general, and of existing society in particular. On these laws our faith is founded. By consciously arranging the social institutions which so profoundly affect our lives, in harmony with these laws, we shall cease to be the slaves of a blind necessity.

As Engels has well said: “Man’s social organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed by Nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action. The extraneous objective forces, that have hitherto governed history, pass under the control of man himself. Only from that time will man himself more and more consciously, make his own history--only from that time will the social causes set in motion by him have, in the main and in a constantly growing measure, the results intended by him. It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”

VIII.

SPENCER’S “SOCIAL ORGANISM.”

The crowning generalization of modern thought is that which presents the Universe as a unity, inter-related in all its parts. By it, the defenders of dualism are discredited, and their theological, metaphysical philosophy is thrown aside. It is no longer God and Man, nor even Man and God, but Man only, with God an anthropomorphic shadow, related to man not as his creator, but as created by him. God and Man are not “two,” but in reality “one.”

Modern science has reversed the order of their appearance, and also the order of their dependence. That which seemed to our primitive ancestors a living reality, a separate and independent being, proves, when submitted to the tests of anthropology and psychology, to have been a creature of their own dreams.

And thus, as a result of scientific research into the origin of dualism and the nature of dreams, as Professor Clifford says: “The dim and shadowy outline of the superhuman deity fades slowly from before us; and as the mist of his presence floats aside, we perceive with greater and greater clearness, the shape of a yet grander and nobler figure--the figure of him who made all Gods and shall unmake them. From the dim dawn of history, and from the inmost depths of every soul, the face of our father man looks out upon us, with the fire of eternal youth in his eyes, and says: ‘Before Jehovah was, I am.’”

The thinker who would expand his intellectual wings in this monistic atmosphere, must possess not only a “discriminating” mind, but also, as Marcus Hitch suggests, a “unifying” mind. There are two errors he must avoid; the creation of distinctions that do not exist and the ignoring of distinctions that do.

The chief sinner against this first canon of dialectical thinking is our old friend the theologian. When the evolutionary naturalists demonstrated the hopeless untruth of his “revealed” legends about the origin of men and things, he sought refuge in the ingenious theory that these fables while scientifically indefensible were, notwithstanding, spiritually true. In short, scientific truth and spiritual truth were so distinct as to have no vital relations. These “artful dodgers” have relieved controversial literature of much of its wonted heaviness and contributed generally to the gaiety of the nations.

Socialists have always been among the first to enjoy these entertaining performances, and it seems like divine retribution when these same theological and “Reverend” persons tumble over into the Socialist camp and bring their obsolete methods of thinking with them.

They dub themselves “Christian” Socialists and proceed to show that “Socialism is a philosophy concerning the social and economic life of man, and not the religious at all.” When Marx declared that political and legal and other social institutions and ideas were the result of economic conditions and class interests, religious institutions and ideas were, of course, exempt.

After a mental contortion like that, what is to prevent a reconciliation between the 17th century twaddle of the methodist pulpit and the materialist conception of history?

Those who break the second canon given, are not all theologians. Among those who ignore distinctions that do exist, the biological sociologist is entitled to conspicuous mention.

August Comte, who “attempted to make of sociology a sort of transcendental biology,” had at least this excuse that he wrote his positivist philosophy before Darwin published his “Origin of Species” and, therefore, while biology was yet in long clothes and sociology was unborn. Although Comte is generally regarded as the founder of sociology, these limitations made it impossible to do little more than invent the name and foresee its possibility.

These excuses, however, can scarcely be invoked for Haeckel, who, as we have already seen, wholly ignored in his inferences, fundamental differences between the division of labor in animal societies and that division in human societies. Haeckel’s biological sociology conveniently overlooks the rather important fact that while a working bee can not by any possibility act as a drone, the working man has at least no physical disabilities to prevent him from doing anything that pertains to the role of a prince. Reasoning by analogy is always dangerous, especially when the analogy itself breaks down.

While it is well to keep these rules in mind, it must be conceded that their critical application is somewhat limited when we come to Spencer’s famous analogy between animal organisms and human societies. The “synthetic” philosopher was much Haeckel’s superior in sociology, and he possessed an immense fund of biological lore that was unavailable to Comte writing a quarter of a century earlier.

Thus Spencer seems to recognize that his essay on “The Social Organism” is largely an ingenious analogy, from which conclusions must be drawn with caution. Not that bourgeois scientists have always exhibited a very scientific temper in this regard. On the contrary they have, on every possible occasion, proclaimed that certain alleged truths in physics or biology were in irreconcilable contradiction to certain Socialist conclusions in sociology.

But we may find a key to Spencer’s chariness in the matter of drawing conclusions in the rather surprising fact, which will appear presently, that the one legitimate conclusion which the analogy will thoroughly sustain, is an exact contradiction to all that Spencer had ever proclaimed on social questions.

The essay itself, like a great deal of Spencer’s writing, is prolix and wearisome, so we shall select only his most important and striking comparisons.