Part 5

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.”