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 complex and more perfect.

It would then be a mistake to invoke against socialism the Darwinian law
of Natural Selection in the form under which that law manifests itself
in the primitive (or lower) forms of life, without taking into account
its continuous attenuation as we pass from vegetables to animals, from
animals to men, and within humanity itself, from the primitive races to
the more advanced races.

And as socialism represents a yet more advanced phase of human progress,
it is still less allowable to use as an objection to it such a gross and
inaccurate interpretation of the Darwinian law.

It is certain that the oppone