42] L. JACOBY, _L'Idea dell' evoluzione_, in _Bibliotheca dell'
economista_, serie III, vol. IX, 2d part, p. 69.

[43] At the death of Darwin the _Sozialdemokrat_ of the 27th of April,
1882, wrote: "The proletariat who are struggling for their emancipation
will ever honor the memory of Charles Darwin."

Conf. LAFARGUE, _La theorie darwinienne_.

I am well aware that in these last years, perhaps in consequence of the
relations between Darwinism and socialism, consideration has again been
given to the objections to the theory of Darwin, made by Voegeli, and
more recently by Weismann, on the hereditary transmissibility of
acquired characters. See SPENCER, _The Inadequacy of Natural Selection_,
Paris, 1894.--VIRCHOW, _Transformisme et descendance_, Berlin, 1893. But
all this merely concerns such or such a detail of Darwinism, while the
fundamental theory of metamorphic organic development remains
impregnable.

PART SECOND.

EVOLUTION AND SOCIALISM.

The theory of universal evolution which--apart from such or such a more
or less disputable detail--is truly characteristic of the vital tendency
of modern scientific thought, has also been made to appear in absolute
contradiction with the theories and the practical ideals of socialism.

In this case the fallacy is obvious.

If socialism is understood as that vague complex of sentimental
aspirations so often crystallized into the artificial utopian creations
of a new human world to be substituted by some sort of magic in a single
day for the old world in which we live; then it is quite true that the
scientific theory of evolution condemns the presumptions and the
illusions of artificial or utopian political theories, which, whether
they are reactionary or revolutionary, are always romantic, or in the
words of the American Senator Ingalls, are "iridescent dreams."

But, unfortunately for our adversaries, contemporary socialism is an
entirely different thing from the socialism which preceded the work of
Marx. Apart from the same sentiment of protest against present
injustices and the same aspirations toward a better future, there is
nothing in common between these two socialisms, neither in their logical
structure nor in their deductions, unless it be the clear vision, which
in modern socialism becomes a mathematically exact prediction (thanks to
the theories of evolution) of the final social organization--based on
the collective ownership of the land and the mean