In the year 1906, the paper which has the largest circulation among English Socialists, “The Clarion,” took a vote of its readers as to whom they considered to be the greatest man, the man who had contributed most to the progress of the race, which England had produced. By an overwhelming majority the place of honor went to Charles Darwin. That vote was as much a vindication of English Socialists as it was of the man whose name has become almost a synonym for “modern science.”

Liebknecht, in his “Biographical Memoirs of Karl Marx”, speaking of Marx and himself, says: ”When Darwin drew the consequences of his investigations and presented them to the public, we spoke for months of nothing else but Darwin and the revolutionizing power of his scientific conquests.”

Leopold Jacoby writes thus: “The same year in which appeared Darwin’s book (1859) and coming from a quite different direction, an identical impulse was given to a very important development of social science by a work which long passed unnoticed, and which bore the title: “Critique of Political Economy” by Karl Marx—it was the forerunner of Capital. What Darwin’s book on the “Origin of Species” is on the subject of the genesis and evolution of organic life from non-sentient nature up to Man, the work of Marx is on the subject of the genesis and evolution of association among human beings, of States, and the social forms of humanity.”

Commenting on this passage of Jacoby’s Enrico Ferri says: “And this is why Germany, which has been the most fruitful field for the development of the Darwinian theories, is also the most fruitful field for the intelligent, systematic propaganda of socialist ideas. And it is precisely for this reason that in Berlin, in the windows of the book-stores of the socialist propaganda, the works of Charles Darwin occupy the place of honor beside those of Karl Marx.”

Frederick Engels, in his reply to Duehring, speaks of Darwin as follows: “He dealt the metaphysical conception of nature the heaviest blow by his proof that all organic beings, plants, animals, and man himself, are the products of a process of evolution going on through millions of years. In this connection Darwin must be named before all others.”

Again, in the preface to the “Communist Manifesto” speaking of the materialistic conception of history, he says: “This proposition, in my opinion, is destined to do for history what Darwin’s theory has done for biology.”

And speaking at the grave-side of his illustrious colleague—Marx, he said: “Just as Darwin discovered the law of development in organic nature, so Marx discovered the law of development in human society.”

Says August Bebel, in “Woman,” “Marx, Darwin, Buckle, have all three, each in his own way, been of the greatest significance for modern development and the future form and growth of human society will, to an extreme degree, be shaped and guided by their teaching and discoveries.”

And Kautsky in his work on ethics declares that Darwin’s discoveries “belong to the greatest and most fruitful of the human intellect, and enable us to develop a new critique of knowledge.”

Ernest Untermann, in his latest work “Marxian Economics,” well says: “Marx discovered the specific laws of social development among human beings. * * * But while doing this, it never occurred to him to disregard the results of Darwin’s work. On the contrary, he knew the art of combining Darwin’s results with his own, without doing violence to either.”

This evidence of the general consensus of opinion among Socialist scholars as to the value of Darwin’s work and its special importance for Socialism could easily be enlarged indefinitely. But enough has been cited to show that a comprehensive grasp of the Socialist philosophy implies a knowledge of Darwinian theories.

The greatness of Darwin’s work has two aspects; the immense impetus he gave to the general theory of evolution, and, his discovery of its main process, “natural selection.” In the popular mind this distinction is lost in confusion and a great army of popular but ill-informed expounders have added to the muddle. The two things although closely related—cause and effect—are yet quite distinct, and a clearer understanding of Darwin’s work is made possible by the distinction being kept in mind. The honor of having discovered “natural selection” Darwin shares with Wallace only; as a contributor to the theory of evolution, he is one of a long and illustrious line. But even here he is the greatest of them all precisely because of his specific discovery which, by explaining how evolution works—at least among living things, (biology)—has made the general theory impregnable.

Before proceeding to that specific theory let us clearly understand that evolution has ceased to be a theory merely, it is also a well established fact. Anyone who denies this has no part or lot in the intellectual life of the last half century. Such a one, as Professor Giddings recently said, “inhabits a world of intellectual shades. He cannot grasp the earthly interests of the twentieth century.”

Every science in the biological hierarchy has contributed its quota to the establishment of the theory of evolution, and that theory in return has, in one department after another, produced order and system where before nothing existed but a conglomerate mass of apparently unrelated facts. So thoroughly has the theory impregnated every branch of science that an intelligent dentist must be an evolutionist.

The chief honors fall to the two sciences Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Ontogeny deals with the history of the germ from its beginning as an egg to its full fruition as a fully developed individual or as Haeckel defines it, “the history of the evolution of individual human organisms.” Phylogeny is defined by the same authority as, “the history of the evolution of the descent of man, that is, of the evolution of the various animal forms through which, in the course of countless ages, mankind has gradually passed to its present form.”

I mention these two sciences together because it is by comparing them that their chief significance appears. It is one of the most astonishing discoveries of science and at the same time one of the most convincing proofs of evolution, that the whole process of the development of the human race from the lowest or simplest forms, which constitutes the subject-matter of phylogeny, is reproduced in brief in the development of the embryo of the individual. This remarkable fact Haeckel named “the biogenetic principle.”

Darwin’s chief claim however to a pedestal in the hall of fame rests on his discovery of “natural selection.”

During his memorable voyage on “The Beagle” he observed that there was no essential connection between a species’ reproductive powers and the number of its population. As this discovery plays an important part in his theory we will let him speak for himself. In his “Journal of Researches” he gives the following case, with his conclusion: “I was surprised to find, on counting the eggs of a large white Doris (a kind of sea slug) how extraordinarily numerous they were. From two to five eggs (each three thousandths of an inch in diameter) were contained in a spherical little case. These were arranged two deep in transverse rows forming a ribbon. The ribbon adhered to the rock in an oval sphere. One which I found, measured nearly twenty inches in length and half inch in breadth. By counting how many balls were contained in a tenth of an inch in the row, and how many rows in an equal length of the ribbon, on the most moderate computation there were six hundred thousand eggs. Yet this Doris was certainly not very common: although I was often searching under the stones I saw only seven individuals. No fallacy is more common among naturalists, than that the numbers of an individual species depend on its powers of propagation.”

This instance is moderate compared with multitudes of others. The question then arises as to why, of such a numerous progeny, only a sufficient number reach adult stage as will replace the parent stock so that population remains practically stationary.

Here Darwin became indebted to Dr. Malthus who, but for that indebtedness would have been forgotten ere this. In his “Essay on Population” Malthus points out various “checks” to the increase of population. His main theory was that the population tends to increase more rapidly than the food supply. The Reverend Doctor, having begotten twelve children of his own, felt “called” to point out to British parents the desirability and even necessity of limiting their families in the interest of society. Malthus applied his theory to human society where it is palpably false. Darwin transferred it to the natural world where it proved to be a great truth. The obvious explanation of this paradox is: that man, by agriculture and industry, can increase his food supply to a greater proportion than any probable or even possible increase of population. Animals cannot; their food supply is beyond their control; they have no power to artificially increase the supply. This difference totally destroyed the value of Malthus’ book as a treatise on political economy. His immortality is assured solely because he accidentally contributed a link to Darwin’s chain.

And now Darwin has travelled on his great journey thus far: Animals propagate enormously but their population generally does not increase. The main reason for this, though there are others, is, that their number is limited by the amount of food available. Therefore, if two parents produce ten thousand only two or three individuals will reach maturity: the rest will perish. The remainder of the problem, which still remained for Darwin to solve, was: first, is there any law which determines which shall survive and which shall be destroyed; and second, if there is such a law, will that law explain and thus, at the same time, prove, the origin of new species? It is precisely because Darwin solved both points of this tremendous problem with a clear and irrefutable affirmative that he occupies the foremost place in the annals of science.

Professor John Fiske said: “There is one thing which a man of original scientific or philosophical genius in a rightly ordered world should never be called upon to do. He should never be called upon to earn a living; for that is a wretched waste of energy, in which the highest intellectual power is sure to suffer serious detriment, and runs the risk of being frittered away into hopeless ruin.”

Whether Fiske was right or wrong the only pertinent point here is that Darwin was spared that necessity.

To his great task he brought a patience that is almost without parallel. One of his biographers, Grant Allen, tells us that: “His uncle and father-in-law, Josiah Wedgwood, suggested to him that the apparent sinking of stones on the surface might really be due to earthworm castings. So, as soon as he had some land of his own to experiment upon, he began in 1842, to spread broken chalk over a field at Down, in which, twenty-nine years later in 1871, a trench was dug to test the results. “What other naturalist,” asks Allen, ever waited so long and so patiently to discover the upshot of a single experiment? Is it wonderful that a man who worked like that should succeed, not by faith but by logical power, in removing mountains?”

Darwin studied domestic animals. He observed how many, and how widely different, races there are of horses, dogs, swine, poultry in general and pigeons in particular. In each instance the many varieties are derived from an original common stock, as domestic fowls from the Indian jungle fowl, and pigeons from the old-world rock-dove.

“Derived,” but how—by what process? In the case of domestic creatures this was not difficult to answer. It is accomplished by breeders “selecting” the individuals to be bred from. In the case of pigeons, which Darwin laid particular stress on the fancier seemed to be able to obtain almost any kind of a bird by selecting as parents those pigeons which had the desired characteristics developed to the most pronounced degree, and then again selecting in the same way from their progeny. In this way were produced birds so different from each other and their ancestors as the tumbler, the fantail, the pouter, and about a hundred and fifty other varieties. The same with horses. If the breeder desired draught horses, he selected for parents those animals with massive shoulders and sturdy limbs. When a racer wins a “classic” race, it is at once sent to the stud-farm. Although in the zenith of its powers it races no more; it is “selected” for another and more important role—the reproduction and, it is hoped, the accentuation of the characteristics which enabled it to outrun its competitors.

All this impressed on Darwin’s mind the importance of the word “selection,” which appears in the title of his theory and the subtitle of his epoch-making book. Could it be possible that nature contained some principle or combination of principles, which performed among wild animals a part analogous to that of the breeder, among domestic animals? Darwin discovered that this is precisely what takes place. His famous theory may be formulated under the three following heads:

(1)Heredity.

(2)Variation.

(3)The struggle for existence, with its resultant, survival of the fittest.

Darwin requires very little of heredity, and what he does ask is beyond dispute. It is enough for his theory if like begets like and “figs do not grow on thistles.”

Similarly with variation, the demands of his hypothesis are very slight. If it be conceded that variation is a fact, that offspring do vary from their parents and each other, it is enough. And who will dispute this in a world where no two creatures are exactly and in all particulars alike? The apparent contradiction that, heredity demands likeness, while variation requires difference, is confined to the surface—it is not real. The likeness is general while the difference is particular. A sheep may be born with shorter or longer legs, by variation; but it will be a sheep and not a horse, by heredity.

As an example of the working of the theory let us take Lamarck’s piece de resistance, the giraffe. Lamarck says: “We know that this animal, the tallest of mammals, inhabits the interior of Africa, and that it lives in localities where the earth, almost always arid and destitute of herbage, obliges it to browse on the foliage of trees and to make continual efforts to reach it. It has resulted from this habit, maintained for a long period in all the individuals of its race, that its forelegs have become longer than the hinder ones, and that its neck is so elongated that the giraffe, without standing on its hind legs, raises its head and reaches six meters in height (almost twenty feet).”

Lamarck thought this length of neck was acquired by “continual efforts to reach,” or, as Alfred Russell Wallace puts it in his criticism of Lamarck—“stretching.” Many critics ventilated their wit on this theory of Lamarck’s, under the impression that they were lampooning Darwin’s idea.

They made a blunder similar to that of those critics of Utopian Socialism who labor under the pleasing delusion that they are riddling the theories of Marx. Professor Ritchie has preserved a couple of stanzas by a witty Scotch judge who aimed his poem at Darwin, but hit Lamarck.

But Darwin’s theory is altogether independent of the “stretching” idea. The causes and origin of heredity and variation are up to this moment, alike wrapped in mystery. But when science succeeds in penetrating those secrets, it is extremely unlikely that Darwin’s theory will be seriously weakened, no matter what the causes may prove to be.

Now about the giraffe. We will suppose, for the sake of illustration, two giraffes, a male and a female, whose necks are precisely five feet long. We will confine our illustration to the question of the neck alone. We will suppose this particular pair to give birth to a family of three. First comes heredity. All we ask of heredity is that the young shall be giraffes, not camels or any other species; and this heredity guarantees. Now comes variation. As this is an ideal case for the purpose of illustrating the theory, we will have one of the three shorter-necked than the parents, another the same length, while the third has a longer neck—over five feet.

Now comes the struggle for existence. When this family of giraffes is fairly grown and the new-comers are approaching breeding age—mark the importance of this matter of “breeding age,” for the problem is to find out how nature determines which shall be bred from—they are obliged to forage for themselves. There is no pasture to graze; they live in what is almost a desert. There are few shrubs; scarcely anything but fairly high trees—from ten to twenty feet. If a giraffe breeder had this matter in hand and he wished to increase the length of the giraffe’s neck, the problem would be simple. He would select number three with the longest neck, pair it with the longest necked member of the opposite sex in some other family and the trick would be done. But this is in Central Africa, where there is no breeder to interfere, and the question is: can nature accomplish the same result without his help?

This is what happens. First the leaves are eaten from all the lower branches as they are reached with the least effort. Then they go higher and still higher until the point is reached where number one with the shortest neck cannot reach any further and the terrible struggle for existence begins. Number two sees no danger as yet and number three has things all his own way. But with short-necked number one, a tragedy has begun. Every day now sees the food further out of his reach and even number two is obliged to reach out for his supply. The breeding time is approaching but the longer necked and therefore well-fed and vigourous females will have nothing to do with this wobbley starving creature, and the longer necked, well-fed males shun the short-necked starving females. If the starving ones mate, the mother dies before giving birth to offspring, or she cannot get nourishment enough to rear her progeny; in either case there is no effective succession. So the longer-necked are the fittest and they survive. Thus does nature “select” one by the negative process of destroying the rest, in about the same way as a man “selects” one puppy in a litter by drowning the rest.

In the case of the puppies we may say “artificial selection;” in the case of the giraffe it is “natural selection.” And this theory, simple as it may seem here, revolutionized Biology.

It is worthy of note that “natural” selection has many advantages over “artificial” selection. The breeder may be mistaken; he may select the wrong puppy and drown its superior. The horse that won the great race may have had a fleeter-footed companion in the same stable had the trainer known how to develop his possibilities. The gardener may have passed the best root or stem through carelessness. But nature makes no such mistakes, or if she does she eventually redeems them. Her method, while it is wholly fortuitous and unintelligent, is practically infallible. The condition of survival is, adaptation to environment. The very process of selection is, in itself, a sure test of fitness. True, moral considerations are eliminated—at least in the non-social world—yet nature offers something like a fair field and no favors. When we speak of nature’s favorites, we simply mean those who are best fitted to meet her hard conditions.

Take a row of celery plants, from which future seedlings are to be “selected.”

In this instance, let us suppose, the quality desired is ability to resist frost. How is the gardener to know which of fifty plants are the “best” in this respect. He has no method of finding out with any degree of certainty. But nature comes along some night with a sharp frost and “selects” ten by killing forty. And the very act of this “natural” selection proves that these ten are better able to withstand the frost than their fellows.

Breeders of white sheep who supply the white wool market have a very tangible guide—they kill every lamb that shows the least tinge of black. But even here, nature is not to be out-done. In Virginia there is—or at least was in Darwin’s day—a wild hog of pure black. One of its staple foods was known as the “paint-root.” Any hog with the least speck of white on its body was poisoned by this root while its all-black brothers found it a health-sustaining and succulent food.

In an environment which remained constant and where a species of animals had reached a population which strained the limits of subsistence—food supply—those offspring which most closely resemble their parents, who had won out in that environment, would again succeed and be selected. While if the environment changed—became warmer or colder for example—those descendants which happened to vary in a direction making them better able to cope with the new conditions would be selected for survival as against those who resembled their parents, which parents had survived in their day because they were adapted to the prior environment.

For example, a country is well supplied with water and it is as a consequence fertile and “green.” In such a country green insects and green reptiles will be selected, because a green background will render them almost invisible to their enemies. Individuals of other colors will make their appearance by variation, but they will be such plain targets to their enemies, they will be devoured before they reach breeding age and have a chance to reproduce the variation.

But suppose desiccation (drying up) sets in. The country loses its water supply, as Krapotkin has shown to have been the case in North-West Mongolia and East Turkestan, leading to the enforced exodus of the barbarians. Now green will disappear and brown or yellow—say brown—takes its place. While this change will not, so far as we know, cause insects and lizards to breed brown instead of green, it will ensure the survival or “selection” of such as are born brown and the destruction of those who breed true to their green ancestors. Now every atavistic return to green will be mercilessly weeded out, just as, when the country was well-watered and green, every sporadic production of brown was done to death.

This is the biological foundation of that environment philosophy which now pervades all our thinking. Change the physical environment, says the biologist, and the species will be transformed. Change the economic environment, says the Socialist, and, if you make the right change, the race will be redeemed. Both statements rest on the same fundamental laws.

As the many and highly important implications of this theory, are fully dealt with in subsequent lectures most of them will be passed here.

We may note however, that whenever any nation in the modern world, produces, in the development of its industry, a Socialistic variation, that new feature at once proves its utility and is “selected” in the Darwinian sense, because it constitutes an advantage over the previous form of social organization, in that particular. This is the reason why the trust—which is socialistic and revolutionary in its essential tendences—is always victorious, in spite of the foolish ravings of the Hearst newspapers and the antediluvian twaddle of William Jennings Bryan.

But Darwin’s crowning achievement is that he made the general theory of evolution impregnable by thoroughly and conclusively demonstrating it in his own field as a naturalist. From then on it was only a question of time as to when its application would be universal. Socialism may be defined as the application of the theory of evolution to the phenomena of society. This is precisely what Marx and Engels accomplished, and this why their work is so fundamentally opposed to the conventional theories and theological superstitious current in their time, and so fully in harmony with all the latest achievements in the scientific world. History ceases to be a meaningless mass of war and famine, bloodshed and cruelty. It becomes a panorama presenting the development of society according to laws which may be understood and with a future that may be measurably predicted.

It develops by the operation of forces that no man or class can wholly stay or hinder. The power of those forces and the direction in which they are now making has been well set forth by Victor Hugo by a very striking simile in the following passage:

“We are in Russia. The Neva is frozen. Heavy carriages roll upon its surface. They improvise a city. They lay out streets. They build houses. They buy. They sell. They laugh. They dance. They permit themselves anything. They even light fires on this water become granite. There is winter, there is ice and they shall last forever. A gleam pale and wan spreads over the sky and one would say that the sun is dead. But no, thou art not dead, oh Liberty! At an hour when they have most profoundly forgotten thee; at a moment when they least expect thee, thou shall arise, oh, dazzling sight! Thou shalt shoot thy bright and burning rays, thy heat, thy life, on all this mass of ice become hideous and dead. Do you hear that dull thud, that crackling, deep and dreadful? ’Tis the Neva tearing loose. You said it was granite. See it splits like glass. ’Tis the breaking of the ice, I tell you. ’Tis the water alive, joyous and terrible. Progress recommences. ’Tis humanity again beginning its march. ’Tis the river which retakes its course, uproots, mangles, strikes together, crushes and drowns in its waves not only the empire of upstart Czar Nicholas, but all of the relics of ancient and modern despotism. That trestle work floating away? It is the throne. That other trestle? It is the scaffold. That old book, half sunk? It is the old code of capitalist laws and morals. That old rookery just sinking? It is a tenement house in which wage slaves lived. See these all pass by; passing by never more to return; and for this immense engulfing, for this supreme victory of life over death, what has been the power necessary? One of thy looks, oh, sun! One stroke of thy strong arm, oh, labor!”