Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/606

588 go in denying equality, that even where in idea we should have equality, Darwinism pronounces its realization an impossibility. Darwinism is the scientific establishment of inequality, and hence the assertion that the Darwinian doctrine is above all a recognition of the doctrine of the equality of all men needs no refutation from our side: it has no foundation in fact.

Again, nowhere in the literature of Darwinism do we find the axioms that "every man is from the beginning good," or that "all men are equal in their capacity for development."

As to what the Darwinians think, let me quote from my book, "Darwinism and the Doctrine of Descent": "The grade to which this (intellectual) development rises is generally dependent on the preceding generations. The psychical capacities of each individual bear the family type, and are determined by the laws of heredity. For it is simply untrue that, independently of color and descent, each man, under conditions otherwise alike, may attain a like pitch of mental development" (page 296).

Had it not been that we are held answerable for these ideas of the Socialist Democrats, we should never have esteemed them worthy of notice.

The Socialist Democrats anticipate, when their state shall have been founded, the universal contentment of all men, who shall labor partly out of personal inclination, partly by state ordinance. For this, good men will surely be needed, for one year after the proclamation of equality, the "Volksstaat" (1874, No. 30) demands that "the strong and the weak, the bright and the dull, force of mind and force of body, in so far as they are human, shall in a partnership such as befits human beings be associated in labor, and associated in the enjoyment of its fruits."

Here we must consider that fraction of the Socialist Democrats who with Engels (ubi supra, pages 223 sqq., and especially page 235) imagine that the inequality which man inherits from his brute origin, an inequality that can not be done away, will be paralyzed under the new social order. As we have seen, some of the Socialists deduce the inequality of human individuals from the unnaturalness of the old form of social organization; they not only maintain a vague idea of equality, but they also expect to see an equal development of individuals, though strong and weak, bright and dull, still continue.

On the other hand, Engels calls the advanced advocates of equality "ghosts," and the demand of the proletariat for an equality beyond the abolition of class, an "absurdity" (page 84); at the same time he is confident that the struggle for existence will cease on the abolition of class distinctions, and will give place to universal mutual good will. This would require that individuals should disregard all actually existent inequalities, whether mental or bodily. Plainly there is no Darwinism here either, and we leave it to others to contest this conversion of the