the fact that in prisons and in the criminal world it is the most cruel
or the most cunning criminals who enjoy the fruits of victory; it is
just the same in our modern economic individualist system; the victory
goes to him who has the fewest scruples; the struggle for existence
favors him who is fittest for a world where a man is valued for what he
has (no matter how he got it), and not for what he is.
The Darwinian law of natural selection functions then even in human
society. The error of those who deny this proposition springs from the
fact that they confound the present environment and the present
transitory historical era--which are known in history as the _bourgeois_
environment and period, just as the Middle Ages are called
_feudal_--with all history and all humanity, and therefore they fail to
see that the disastrous effects of modern, retrograde, social selection
are only confirmations of the Darwinian law of the "survival of the
_fittest_." Popular common sense has long recognized this influence of
the surroundings, as is shown by many a common proverb, and its
scientific explanation is to be found in the necessary biological
relations which exist between a given environment and the individuals
who are born, struggle and survive in that environment.
On the other hand, this truth constitutes an unanswerable argument in
favor of socialism. By freeing the environment from all the corruptions
with which our unbridled economic individualism pollutes it, socialism
will necessarily correct the ill effects of natural and social
selection. In a physically and morally wholesome environment, the
individuals best fitted to it, those who will therefore survive, will
be the physically and morally healthy.
In the struggle for existence the victory will then go to him who has
the greatest and most prolific physical, intellectual and moral
energies. The collectivist economic organization, by assuring to
everyone the conditions of existence, will and necessarily must, result
in the physical and moral improvement of the human race.
To this some one replies: Suppose we grant that socialism and Darwinian
selection may be reconciled, is it not obvious that the survival of the
fittest tends to establish an aristocratic gradation of individuals,
which is contrary to socialistic leveling?
I have already answered this objection in part by pointing out that
socialism will assure to all individuals--instead of as at present only
to a privileged few or to society's heroes--freedom to assert and
develop their own individualities. Then in truth the result of the
struggle for existence will be the survival of the best and this for the
very reason that in a wholesome environment the victory is won by the
healthiest individuals. Social Darwinism, then, as a continuation and
complement of natural (biological) Darwinism, will result in a selection
of the best.
To respond fully to this insistence upon an unlimited aristocratic
selection, I must call attention to another natural law which serves to
complete that rhythm of action and reaction which results in the
equilibrium of life.
To the Darwinian law of natural inequalities we must add another law
which is inseparable from it, and which Jacoby, following in the track
of the labors of Morel, Lucas, Galton, De Caudole, Ribot, Spencer,
Royer, Lombroso, and others, has clearly demonstrated and expounded.
This same Nature, which makes "choice" and aristocratic gradation a
condition of vital progress, afterwards restores the equilibrium by a
leveling and democratic law.
"From the infinite throng of humanity there emerge individuals, families
and races which tend to rise above the common level; painfully climbing
the steep heights they reach the summits of power, wealth, intelligence
and talent, and, having reached the goal, they are hurled down and
disappear in the abysses of insanity and degeneration. Death is the
great leveler; by destroying every one who rises above the common herd,
it democratizes humanity."[25]
Every one who attempts to create a monopoly of natural forces comes into
violent conflict with that supreme law of Nature which has given to all
living beings the use and disposal of the natural agents: air and light,
water and land.
Everybody who is too much above or too much below the average of
humanity--an average which rises with the flux of time, but is
absolutely fixed at any given moment of history--does not live and
disappears from the stage.
The idiot and the man of genius, the starving wretch and the
millionaire, the dwarf and the giant, are so many natural or social
monsters, and Nature inexorably blasts them with degeneracy or
sterility, no matter whether they be the product of the organic life, or
the effect of the social organization.
And so, all families possessing a monopoly of any kind--monopoly of
power, of wealth or of talent--are inevitably destined to become in
their latest offshoots imbeciles, sterile or suicides, and finally to
become extinct. Noble houses, dynasties of sovereigns, descendants of
millionaires--all follow the common law which, here again, serves to
confirm the inductions--in this sense, equalitarian--of science and of
socialism.
FOOTNOTES:
[20] One of the most characteristic processes of social dissolution is
_parasitism_. MASSART and VANDERVELDE, Parasitism, organic and social.
(English translation.) Swan, Sonnenschein & Co., London.
[21] BROCA, _Les sélections_ (§ 6. Les sélections sociales) in _Mémoires
d' anthropologie_, Paris, 1877, III., 205. LAPOUGE, _Les sélections
sociales_, in _Revue d' anthrop._, 1887, p. 519. LORIA, _Discourse su
Carlo Darwin_, SIENNE, 1882. VADALA, _Darwinismo naturale e Darwinismo
sociale_, Turin, 1883. BORDIER, _La vie des sociétés_, Paris, 1887.
SERGI, _Le degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889, p. 158. BEBEL, Woman in
the past, present and future.
[22] MAX NORDAU, Conventional Lies of our Civilization. (English trans.)
Laird & Lee, Chicago, 1895.
[23] While this is shown by all official statistics, it is signally
shown by the facts collated by M. Pagliani, the present Director-General
of the Bureau of Health in the Interior Department, who has shown that
the bodies of the poor are more backward and less developed than those
of the rich, and that this difference, though but slightly manifest at
birth, becomes greater and greater in after life, _i. e._ as soon as the
influence of the economic conditions makes itself felt in all its
inexorable tyranny.
[24] TURATI, _Selezione servile_, in _Critica Sociale_, June 1, 1894.
SERGI, _Degenerazione umane_, Milan, 1889.
[25] JACOBY, _Etudes sur la sélection dans ses rapports avec l'hérédité
chez l'homme_, Paris, 1881, p. 606.
LOMBROSO, _L'uomo di genio_, 6th edition, Turin, 1894, has developed and
complemented this law. This law, so easily forgotten, is neglected by
RITCHIE (Darwinism and Politics. London. Sonnenschein, 1891.) in the
section called "Does the doctrine of Heredity support Aristocracy?"
V.
SOCIALISM AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS.
Not one of the three contradictions between socialism and Darwinism,
which Haeckel formulated, and which so many others have echoed since,
resists a candid and more accurate examination of the natural laws which
bear the name of Charles Darwin.
I add that not only is Darwinism not in contradiction with socialism,
but that it constitutes one of its fundamental scientific premises. As
Virchow justly remarked, socialism is nothing but a logical and vital
corollary, in part of Darwinism, in part of Spencerian evolution.
The theory of Darwin, whether we wish it or not, by demonstrating that
man is descended from the animals, has dealt a severe blow to the belief
in God as the creator of the universe and of man by a special _fiat_.
This, moreover, is why the most bitter opposition, and the only
opposition which still continues, to its scientific inductions, was made
and is made in the name of religion.
It is true that Darwin did not declare himself an atheist[26] and that
Spencer is not one; it is also true that, strictly speaking, the theory
of Darwin, like that of Spencer, can also be reconciled with the belief
in God, since it may be admitted that God created matter and force, and
that both afterward evolved into their successive forms in accordance
with the initial creative impulse. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied
that these theories, by rendering the idea of causality more and more
inflexible and universal, lead necessarily to the negation of God, since
there always remains this question: And God, who created him? And if it
is replied that God has always existed, the same reply may be flung back
by asserting that the universe has always existed. To use the phrase of
Ardigò, human thought is only able to conceive the chain which binds
effects to causes as terminating at a given point, purely
conventional.[27]
God, as Laplace said, is an hypothesis of which exact science has no
need; he is, according to Herzen, at the most an X, which represents not
the _unknowable_--as Spencer and Dubois Raymond contend--but all that
which humanity does not yet know. Therefore, it is a variable X which
decreases in direct ratio to the progress of the discoveries of science.
It is for this very reason that science and religion are in inverse
ratio to each other; the one diminishes and grows weaker in the same
proportion that the other increases and grows stronger in its struggle
against the unknown.[28]
And if this is one of the consequences of Darwinism, its influence on
the development of socialism is quite obvious.
The disappearance of faith in the hereafter, where the poor shall become
the elect of the Lord, and where the miseries of the "vale of tears"
will find an eternal compensation in paradise, gives greater strength to
the desire for some semblance of an "earthly paradise" here below even
for the unfortunate and the poor, who are the great majority.
Hartmann and Guyau[29] have shown that the evolution of religious
beliefs may be summarized thus: All religions include, with various
other matters, the promise of happiness; but the primitive religions
concede that this happiness will be realized during the life of the
individual himself, and the later religions, through an excess of
reaction, place its realization after death, outside the human world; in
the final phase, this realization of happiness is once more placed
within the field of human life, no longer in the ephemeral moment of the
individual existence, but indeed in the continuous evolution of all
mankind.
On this side, then, socialism is closely related to the religious
evolution, and tends to substitute itself for religion, since its aim is
for humanity to have its own "earthly paradise" here, without having to
wait for it in the _hereafter_, which, to say the least, is very
problematical.
Therefore, it has been very justly remarked that the socialist movement
has many traits in common with, for example, primitive Christianity,
notably that ardent faith in the ideal that has definitively deserted
the arid field of bourgeois skepticism, and some savants, not
socialists, such as Messrs. Wallace, de Lavaleye and the Roberty, etc.,
admit that it is entirely possible for socialism to replace by its
humanitarian faith the faith in the hereafter of the former religions.
More direct and potent than these relations (between socialism and faith
in a hereafter) are, however, the relations which exist between
socialism and the belief in God.
It is true that Marxian Socialism, since the Congress held at Erfurt
(1891), has rightly declared that religious beliefs are private
affairs[30] and that, therefore, the Socialist party combats religious
intolerance under all its forms, whether it be directed against
Catholics[31] or against Jews, as I have shown in an article against
_Anti-Semitism_.[32] But this breadth of superiority of view is, at
bottom, only a consequence of the confidence in final victory.
It is because socialism knows and foresees that religious beliefs,
whether one regards them, with Sergi,[33] as pathological phenomena of
human psychology, or as useless phenomena of moral incrustation, are
destined to perish by atrophy with the extension of even elementary
scientific culture. This is why socialism does not feel the necessity of
waging a special warfare against these religious beliefs which are
destined to disappear. It has assumed this attitude although it knows
that the absence or the impairment of the belief in God is one of the
most powerful factors for its extension, because the priests of all
religions have been, throughout all the phases of history, the most
potent allies of the ruling classes in keeping the masses pliant and
submissive under the yoke by means of the enchantment of religion, just
as the tamer keeps wild beasts submissive by the terrors of the cracks
of his whip.
And this is so true that the most clear-sighted conservatives, even
though they are atheists, regret that the religious sentiment--that
precious narcotic--is diminishing among the masses, because they see in
it, though their pharisaism does not permit them to say it openly, an
instrument of political domination.[34]
Unfortunately, or fortunately, the religious sentiment cannot be
re-established by royal decree. If it is disappearing, the blame for
this cannot be laid at the door of any particular individual, and there
is no need of a special propaganda against it, because its antidote
impregnates the air we breathe--saturated with the inductions of
experimental science--and religion no longer meets with conditions
favorable to its development as it did amid the superstitious ignorance
of past centuries.
I have thus shown the direct influence of modern science, science based
on observation and experiment,--which has substituted the idea of
natural causality for the ideas of miracle and divinity,--on the
extremely rapid development and on the experimental foundation of
contemporary socialism.
Democratic socialism does not look with unfriendly eyes upon "Catholic
Socialism" (the Christian Socialism of Southern Europe), since it has
nothing to fear from it.
Catholic socialism, in fact, aids in the propagation of socialist ideas,
especially in the rural districts where religious faith and practices
are still very vigorous, but it will not win and wear the palm of
victory _ad majorem dei gloriam_. As I have shown, there is a growing
antagonism between science and religion, and the socialist varnish
cannot preserve Catholicism. The "earthly" socialism has, moreover, a
much greater attractive power.
When the peasants shall have become familiar with the views of Catholic
socialism, it will be very easy for democratic socialism to rally them
under its own flag--they will, indeed, convert themselves.
Socialism occupies an analogous position with regard to republicanism.
Just as atheism is a private affair which concerns the individual
conscience, so a republican form of government is a private affair which
interests only a part of the bourgeoisie. Certainly, by the time that
socialism draws near to its day of triumph, atheism will have made
immense progress, and a republican form of government will have been
established in many countries which to-day submit to a monarchical
regime. But it is not socialism which develops atheism, any more than it
is socialism which will establish republicanism. Atheism is a product of
the theories of Darwin and Spencer in the present bourgeois
civilization, and republicanism has been and will be, in the various
countries, the work of a portion of the capitalist bourgeoisie, as was
recently said in some of the conservative newspapers of Milan (_Corriere
della sera_ and _Idea liberale_), when "the monarchy shall no longer
serve the interests of the country," that is to say of the class in
power.
The evolution from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy and to
republicanism is an obvious historical law; in the present phase of
civilization the only difference between the two latter is in the
elective or hereditary character of the head of the State. In the
various countries of Europe, the bourgeoisie themselves Hill demand the
transition from monarchy to republicanism, in order to put off as long
as possible the triumph of socialism. In Italy as in France, in England
as in Spain, we see only too many republicans or "radicals" whose
attitude with regard to social questions is more bourgeois and more
conservative than that of the intelligent conservatives. At
Montecitorio, for example, there is Imbriani whose opinions on religious
and social matters are more conservative than those of M. di Rudini.
Imbriani, whose personality is moreover very attractive, has never
attacked the priests or monks--this man who attacks the entire universe
and very often with good reason, although without much success on
account of mistaken methods--and he was the only one to oppose even the
consideration of a law proposed by the _Député_ Ferrari, which increased
the tax on estates inherited by collateral heirs!
Socialism then has no more interest in preaching republicanism than it
has in preaching atheism. To each his role (or task), is the law of
division of labor. The struggle for atheism is the business of science;
the establishment of republicanism in the various countries of Europe
has been and will be the work of the bourgeoisie themselves--whether
they be conservative or radical. All this constitutes the historical
progress toward socialism, and individuals are powerless to prevent or
delay the succession of the phases of the moral, political and social
evolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[26] Darwin never made a declaration of atheism, but that was in fact
his way of looking at the problem ("_sa manière de voir_.").
While Haeckel, concerned solely with triumphing over the opposition,
said at the Congress of Eisenach (1882) that Darwin was not an atheist,
Büchner, on the contrary, published shortly afterward a letter which
Darwin had written him, and in which he avowed that "since the age of
forty years, his scientific studies had led him to atheism."
(See also, "Charles Darwin and Karl Marx: A Comparison," by Ed. Aveling.
Published by the Twentieth Century Press, London.--Translator.)
In the same way, John Stuart Mill never declared himself a Socialist,
but that, nevertheless, in opinion he was one, is made evident by his
autobiography and his posthumous fragments on Socialism. (See "The
Socialism of John Stuart Mill." Humboldt Pub. Co., New York.--Tr.)
[27] ARDIGÒ, _La Formazione naturale_, Vol. II. of his _Opere
filologiche_, and Vol. VI., _La Ragione_, Padone, 1894.
[28] Guyau, _L'Irréligion de l'avenir_. Paris. 1887.
[29] The dominant factor, nevertheless, in religious beliefs, is the
hereditary or traditional _sentimental_ factor; this it is which always
renders them respectable when they are professed in good faith, and
often makes them even appeal to our sympathies,--and this is precisely
because of the ingenuous or refined sensibility of the persons in whom
religious faith is the most vital and sincere.
[30] NITTI, _Le Socialisme catholique_, Paris, 1894, p. 27 and 393.
[31] Its usual form in America.--Translator.
[32] _Nuova Rassegna_, August, 1894.
[33] SERGI, _L'origine dei fenomeni psichici e loro significazione
biologica_, Milan, 1885, p. 334, _et seq._
[34] DURKHEIM, _De la division du travail social_. Paris. 1893. As
regards the pretended influence of religion on personal morality I have
shown how very slight a foundation there was for this opinion in my
studies on criminal psychology, and more particularly in _Omicidio nell'
antropologia criminale_.
VI.
THE INDIVIDUAL AND THE SPECIES.
It can also be shown that scientific socialism proceeds directly from
Darwinism by an examination of the different modes of conceiving of the
individual in relation to the species.
The eighteenth century closed with the exclusive glorification of the
individual, of the _man_--as an entity in himself. In the works of
Rousseau this was only a beneficent, though exaggerated re-action
against the political and sacerdotal tyranny of the Middle Ages.
This individualism led directly to that artificiality in politics, which
I will consider a little further on in studying the relations between
the theory of evolution and socialism, and which is common to the ruling
classes under the bourgeois regime and to the individualistic
anarchists,--since both alike imagine that the social organization can
be changed in a day by the magical effect of a bomb,--more or less
murderous.
Modern biology has radically changed this conception of the _individual_
and it has demonstrated, in the domain of biology as in that of
sociology, that the individual is himself only an aggregation of more
simple living elements, and likewise that the individual in himself, the
_Selbstwesen_ of the Germans, does not exist in independent isolation,
but only as a member of a society (_Gliedwesen_).
Every living object is an association, a collectivity.
The monad itself, the living cell, the irreducible expression of
biological individuality, is also an aggregate of various parts
(nucleus, _nucléole_, protoplasm), and each one of them in its turn is
an aggregate of molecules which are aggregates of atoms.
The atom does not exist alone, as an individual; the atom is invisible
and impalpable and it does not live.
And the complexity of the aggregation, the federation of the parts
constantly increases with the ascent in the zoological series from
protozoa to Man.
Unifying, Jacobin artificiality corresponds to the metaphysics of
individualism, just as the conception of national and international
federalism corresponds to the scientific character of modern socialism.
The organism of a mammal is simply a federation of tissues, organs and
anatomical machinery; the organism of a society can consist of nothing
but a federation of communes, provinces and regions; the organism of
humanity can be nothing but a federation of nations.
If it is absurd to conceive of a mammal whose head should have to move
in the same fashion as the extremities and all of whose extremities
would have to perform the same motions simultaneously, there is no less
absurdity in a political and administrative organization in which the
extreme northern province or the mountainous province, for instance,
have to have the same bureaucratic machinery, the same body of laws, the
same methods, etc., as the extreme southern province or the province
made up of plains, solely through the passion for symmetrical
uniformity, that pathological expression of unity.
If we disregard those considerations of a political order which make it
possible to conclude, as I have done elsewhere,[35] that the only
possible organization for Italy, as for every other country, appeared to
me to be that of an administrative federalism combined with political
unity, we can regard it as manifest, that at the close of the nineteenth
century the individual, as an independent entity, is dethroned alike in
biology and sociology.
The individual exists, but only in so far as he forms a part of a social
aggregate.
Robinson Crusoe--that perfect type of individualism--can not possibly be
aught but a legend or a pathological specimen.
The species--that is to say, the social aggregate--is the great, the
living and eternal reality of life, as has been demonstrated by
Darwinism and confirmed by all the inductive sciences from astronomy to
sociology.