es good care in no way to touch the kernel of the
matter. How, indeed, would it have been possible without arriving at
conclusions wholly opposed to those which he has declared? For the
theory of descent proclaims more clearly than any other scientific
theory, that that equality of individuals which socialism strives
after is an impossibility, that it stands, in fact, in irreconcilable
contradiction to the inevitable inequality of individuals which
actually and everywhere subsists. Socialism demands equal rights,
equal duties, equal possessions, equal enjoyments for every citizen
alike; the theory of descent proves, in exact opposition to this,
that the realisation of this demand is a pure impossibility, and
that in the constitutionally organised communities of men, as of
the lower animals, neither rights nor duties, neither possessions
nor enjoyments have ever been equal for all the members alike nor
ever can be. Throughout the evolutionist theory, as in its biological
branch, the theory of descent--the great law of specialisation or
differentiation--teaches us that a multiplicity of phenomena is
developed from original unity, heterogeneity from original similarity,
and the composite organism from original simplicity. The conditions of
existence are dissimilar for each individual from the beginning of its
existence; even the inherited qualities, the natural "disposition,"
are more or less unlike; how, then, can the problems of life and
their solution be alike for all? The more highly political life is
organised, the more prominent is the great principle of the division
of labour, and the more requisite it becomes for the lasting security
of the whole state that its members should be variously distributed in
the manifold tasks of life; and as the work to be performed by
different individuals is of the most various kind, as well as the
corresponding outlay of strength, skill, property, &c., the reward of
the work must naturally be also extremely various. These are such
simple and tangible facts that one would suppose that every reasonable
and unprejudiced politician would recommend the theory of descent, and
the evolution hypothesis in general, as the best antidote to the
fathomless absurdity of extravagant socialist levelling.

Besides, Darwinism, the theory of natural selection--which Virchow
aimed at in his denunciation, much more especially than at
transformation, the theory of descent--which is often confounded with