legiance at the Berlin University, in 1870,
a Dubois-Reymond exclaimed: "The Universities are the training places
for the life-guards of the Hohenzollern," one may judge how the majority
of the others, who stand both in knowledge and importance far below
Dubois-Reymond,[144] think regarding the purpose of science. Science is
degraded to a maid-servant of the ruling powers.

We can understand how Prof. Haeckel and his disciples, such as Prof. O.
Schmidt, v. Hellwald and others, defend themselves energetically against
the charge that Darwinism plays into the hands of Socialism; and that
they, in turn, maintain the contrary to be true: that Darwinism is
aristocratic in that it teaches that everywhere in Nature the more
highly developed and stronger organism dominates the lower. Seeing that,
according to these gentlemen, the property and cultured classes
represent these more highly developed and stronger organisms in society,
they look upon the domination of these as a matter of course, being
justified by nature.

This wing among our Darwinians has not the faintest notion of the
economic laws that sway capitalist society, whose blind will raises,
without selecting either the best, or the ablest, or the most thorough,
often the most scampish and corrupt; places him on top; and thus puts
him in a position to make the conditions of life and development most
favorable for his descendants, without these having as much as to turn
their hands. Striking an average, under no economic system is the
prospect poorer than under capitalism for individuals animated with good
and noble qualities, to rise and remain above; and it may be added
without exaggeration that the prospect grows darker in the measure that
this economic system approaches its apogee. Recklessness and
unscrupulousness in the choice and application of the means, are weapons
infinitely more effective and promiseful of success than all human
virtues put together. To consider a social system, built upon such a
basis, a system of the "fittest and best" is a feat that only he can be
capable of whose knowledge of the essence and nature of such a society
equals zero; or who, swayed by dyed-in-the-wool bourgeois prejudices,
has lost all power to think on the subject and to draw his conclusions.
The struggle for existence is found with all organisms. Without a
knowledge of the circumstances that force them thereto, the struggle is
carried on unconsciously. Such a struggle for e