Page:Landmarks of Scientific Socialism-Anti-Duehring-Engels-Lewis-1907.djvu/101

 in particular excites Herr Duehring's lofty moral scorn. That this actually exists among plants every meadow, every cornfield and every wood can show him. We need not trouble about the name, whether one call it "struggle for existence" or "lack of the conditions of existence and want of mechanical realisation," but as to how this fact operates as regards the maintenance or transformation of species. With regard to this Herr Duehring persists in a characteristically stubborn silence. We cannot trouble ourselves any more about natural selection.

But "Darwinism produces its changes and differentiations out of nothing." Darwin thoroughly understands that he is engaged with the causes which have produced changes in individuals and in the second place he is engaged with the mode in which such individual differentiations tend to mark off a race, a genus, or a species. Darwin moreover was less occupied in discovering these causes, which up to the present are either entirely unknown or on which there is only general information, than in discovering a rational form in which to establish their reality, to embrace their permanent significance. But Darwin ascribed too wide a reach to his discovery in this that he made it an exclusive means of variation in species and neglected the causes of individual differentiations from the general form. This mistake how ever is common to most people who make a step forwards. Next, if Darwin produces his changes in individual types out of nothing and thereby excludes the wisdom of the breeder, the breeder on his part must not only display his wisdom but he must produce out of nothing real changes in plant and animal forms. But who has given the impetus to the investigation as to