it--Darwinism, I say, is anything rather than socialist! If this
English hypothesis is to be compared to any definite political
tendency--as is, no doubt, possible--that tendency can only be
aristocratic, certainly not democratic, and least of all socialist.
The theory of selection teaches that in human life, as in animal and
plant life everywhere, and at all times, only a small and chosen
minority can exist and flourish, while the enormous majority starve
and perish miserably and more or less prematurely. The germs of every
species of animal and plant and the young individuals which spring
from them are innumerable, while the number of those fortunate
individuals which develop to maturity and actually reach their
hardly-won life's goal is out of all proportion trifling. The cruel
and merciless struggle for existence which rages throughout all living
nature, and in the course of nature _must_ rage, this unceasing and
inexorable competition of all living creatures, is an incontestable
fact; only the picked minority of the qualified "fittest" is in a
position to resist it successfully, while the great majority of the
competitors must necessarily perish miserably. We may profoundly
lament this tragical state of things, but we can neither controvert it
nor alter it. "Many are called but few are chosen." The selection, the
picking out of these "chosen ones," is inevitably connected with the
arrest and destruction of the remaining majority. Another English
naturalist, therefore, designates the kernel of Darwinism very frankly
as the "survival of the fittest," as the "victory of the best." At any
rate, this principle of selection is nothing less than democratic, on
the contrary, it is aristocratic in the strictest sense of the word.
If, therefore, Darwinism, logically carried out, has, according to
Virchow, "an uncommonly suspicious aspect," this can only be found in
the idea that it offers a helping hand to the efforts of the
aristocrats. But how the socialism of the day can find any
encouragement in these efforts, and how the horrors of the Paris
Commune can be traced to them, is to me, I must frankly confess,
absolutely incomprehensible.

Moreover, we must not omit this opportunity of pointing out how
dangerous such a direct and unqualified transfer of the theories of
natural science to the domain of practical politics must be. The
highly elaborate conditions of our modern civilised life require from
the practical politi