Socialism and Modern Science | Page 9

consideration their special physio-psychical conditions. The
present economic individualism exhausts them in factories and
rice-fields; socialism, on the contrary, will require from them only such
professional, scientific or muscular labor as is in perfect harmony with
the sacred function of maternity.
KULISCIOFF, Il monopolio dell'uomo, Milan, 1892, 2d
edition.--MOZZONI, I socialisti e l'emancipazione della donna, Milan,
1891.
[5] B. MALON, Le Socialisme Integral, 2 vol., Paris, 1892.
[6] ZULIANI, Il privilegio della salute, Milan, 1893.
[7] LETOURNEAU, Passé, présent et avenir du travail, in _Revue
mensuelle de l'école d'anthropologie_, Paris, June 15, 1894.
[8] M. Zerboglio has very justly pointed out that individualism acting
without the pressure of external sanction and by the simple internal
impulse toward good (rightness)--this is the distant ideal of Herbert
Spencer--can be realized only after a phase of collectivism, during
which the individual activity and instincts can be disciplined into social
solidarity and weaned from the essentially anarchist individualism of

our times when every one, if he is clever enough to "slip through the
meshes of the penal code" can do what he pleases without any regard to
his fellows.
[9] "Ah, but a man's reach should exceed his grasp," is the way Robert
Browning expresses this in "Andrea Del Sarto."--Translator.
[10] Note our common expression: He is worth so much.--Tr.
[11]
"Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark unfathom'd caves of
ocean bear: Full many a flower is born to blush unseen, And waste its
fragrance on the desert air.
"Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of
his field withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some
Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood." --Stanzas from GRAY'S
"Elegy in a Country Church-yard." Translator.
[12]
"Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead of the fool!"
--Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall."
"Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold! Thus, much of this will make
black, white; foul, fair; Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward,
valiant." --Shakespeare, in "Timon of Athens."--Translator.

III.
THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND ITS VICTIMS.
Socialism and Darwinism, it is said, are in conflict on a second point.
Darwinism demonstrates that the immense majority--of plants, animals
and men--are destined to succumb, because only a small minority
triumphs "in the struggle for life"; socialism, on its part, asserts that all

ought to triumph and that no one ought to succumb.
It may be replied, in the first place, that, even in the biological domain
of the "struggle for existence," the disproportion between the number of
individuals who are born and the number of those who survive
regularly and progressively grows smaller and smaller as we ascend in
the biological scale from vegetables to animals, and from animals to
Man.
This law of a decreasing disproportion between the "called" and the
"chosen" is supported by the facts even if we limit our observation to
the various species belonging to the same natural order. The higher and
more complex the organization, the smaller the disproportion.
In fact, in the vegetables, each individual produces every year an
infinite number of seeds, and an infinitesimal number of these survive.
In the animals, the number of young of each individual diminishes and
the number of those who survive continues on the contrary, to increase.
Finally, for the human species, the number of individuals that each one
can beget is very small and most of them survive.
But, moreover, in the cases of all three, vegetables, animals and men,
we find that it is the lower and more simply organized species, the
races and classes less advanced in the scale of existence, who
reproduce their several kinds with the greatest prolificness and in which
generation follows generation most rapidly on account of the brevity of
individual life.
A fern produces millions of spores, and its life is very short--while a
palm tree produces only a few dozen seeds, and lives a century.
A fish produces several thousand eggs--while the elephant or the
chimpanzee have only a few young who live many years.
Within the human species the savage races are the most prolific and
their lives are short--while the civilized races have a low birth-rate and
live longer.

From all this it follows that, even confining ourselves to the purely
biological domain, the number of victors in the struggle for existence
constantly tends to approach nearer and nearer to the number of births
with the advance or ascent in the biological scale from vegetables to
animals, from animals to men, and from the lower species or varieties
to the higher species or varieties.
The iron law of "the struggle for existence," then, constantly reduces
the number of the victims forming its hecatomb with the ascent of the
biological scale, and the rate of decrease becomes more and more rapid
as the forms of life become more