that of the Iron Law of Wages or that of Surplus Value, which have been unable to stand criticism.

NOTE

Of the numerous books on Socialism Mr. John Rae's Contemporary Socialism, 2nd ed., 1891, and Mr. W. H. Dawson's German Socialism and Ferdinand Lassalle, 1888, stand very high, the former for its economics, the latter for its history. They have a judicial tone which is wanting in nearly all the German writings on the subject.

1891

CHAPTER II.

EPILOGUE.

RELATION OF ECONOMICS TO THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION.

We have finally to consider whether the theory of Evolution, either in its philosophical or in its Darwinian form, is an argument for Socialism, and whether the positions of the Socialists, apart from the theory of evolution, have any measure of truth.

The discussion will seem to many economists to be outside the range of their subject, as the work of economics is mainly analytic and relates to "social statics." But a purely analytical and statical inquiry seems impossible. We can never find all the truth about the present condition of industry in the present itself; and, when we try to do so, we find ourselves altering the meaning of the word "present" at every step. We cannot understand the nature of Work for Wages, for example, without looking backwards to the formation of the capital that made its first payment possible and forwards to the profitable sale of the product which is the condition of its continued payment. The "present" comes to mean a day or a year, a generation or a century, as may suit the purpose of the particular analysis on hand. We may abstract from all causes except the economical; but, if our method led us to abstract from all economical sequences and look only at economical facts without any dynamical or causal connection, it could not lead us to any truth. Economical progress (or at least process) is the object of our inquiry even when we are trying to study what we call the facts of our own time. Whether such economical movement takes place according to the principles of Evolution is therefore not a question beyond the range of economics.

When "evolution" occurs in popular language and when it is said (for example) that all must take place by

"the law of evolution," little more is usually meant than that changes must be continuous and there must be no sudden break; there is seldom, if ever, any idea of the priority of the whole to the parts, or any conception of development as a change in which the later outcome may be said to determine the earlier stages more truly than the latter the former. Yet, judging the theory of development by its best exponents, we find this deeper idea present.

The principle of evolution or development is perhaps best illustrated to the philosophical reader by a reference to Aristotle's distinction of power or possibility (duvaus) from act or realization (évépyaα). In the life of each ordinary human being manhood may be taken as the realization of what is present in childhood as a power or possibility. The steps from the latter to the former are stages in a development or evolution. In all life, human or not, this distinction is present. There is a germ which grows into the mature plant or the mature animal. There is first a promise or potency, and afterwards a fulfilment or realization. Development is not simply change. It implies that there is something gained, but gained in greater or less measure from within, not simply imposed from without on the subject of the development. The changes that have taken place leave the identity of the subject of the changes unimpaired. In becoming what he is, the man remains in a sense what he was as a child. If he were not the same, the case would not be one of growth and development, but simply of the addition of another unit to the total number of men or the substitution of a new unit for an old. But the past is preserved while the form is altered. In pronouncing a change to be a development we are mentally conjoining and comparing the past and the present, and pronouncing them conjoined in fact.

This notion of development is not abandoned when we speak of the growth of a nation. The identity of the human being remains though every part of his body has changed in the course of his growth from boy to manhood or else it is not he who has grown. The identity of a nation has been preserved through its changes, or else it is not it that has grown. On the other hand the

growth of a nation does not depend on the continued. existence of particular individuals composing the nation, but on the continuous preservation of a common consciousness in the members existing through successive times. The unity is that of the nation.

Such is development in general theory. The evolution of Humanity carries the analogy one step farther. The growth of the human race is indifferent to the fate of particular nations, but not to the common consciousness of men regarded as one great organic body developing together to maturity. The past is always thought as conjoined with the present; what is now actually present was in the past potentially so.

This at least is the philosophical notion of development as presented by Hegel. There is therefore no justification for the view that Hegel's Method is merely negative and destructive or can be so regarded without the abandonment of Hegel's general position. When Engels tries to deduce from Hegel's own logic that the Hegelian Idealism must give place to Materialism, he is no doubt well aware of the retort which any tyro in Hegelianism could at once make that the next step in development would overthrow the said materialism and replace it by a truth that conciliated the two opposites, idealism and materialism, with one another. Whether the resulting Pantheism would be Hegel's own philosophy or not, we need not here discuss.

Darwinism is a particular form of the general theory that there is an evolution of life in the world. It differs from the Hegelian theory of development in its application to cases where preservation of identity is not possible, and where even the continuity of growth exists only for us and in retrospect. Darwin explains "the origin of species," both in the animal and the vegetable

3

1 Passim, e.g., Philos. of Hist. (Engl. tr.), pp. 57, 58, (German) pp. 67-69.

On

* Continuity is implied in the sense above stated, that there be no saltus. See Darwin, Origin of Species, chap. vi. p. 156 (pop. ed. 1885): "Why should Nature not take a leap from structure to structure? the theory of natural selection we can clearly understand why she should not," etc., cf. 234.

3 Darwin, Origin of Species, passim, e.g., Introd., p. 5, and pp. 50, 413, 429 (pop. ed.). See above (Malthus), Book III., ch. i.

world, by supposing with Malthus in all living things a tendency to rapid multiplication, leading necessarily to a struggle for existence, and (second) by supposing that in each living thing produced by this power of propagation there is some slight difference from its fellows, such variations giving an advantage in the struggle to some over others, the result being a "natural selection," "a survival of the fittest."1 Malthus had seen that there must be a struggle for room and food. Darwin showed that in all plants and animals, and in man in his early stage, the victory in the struggle must go to those to whom nature had given some slight peculiarity that proved a help to them and was wanting to their rivals.

66

The result in successive generations is so great an alteration of the living creature that it seems to belong to a new species. But what we call a new species is simply the old sifted and resifted by “natural selection." Species have been modified during a long course of descent. This has been effected chiefly through the natural selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations, aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts, and in an unimportant manner (that is, in relation to adaptive structures whether past or present) by the direct action of external conditions, and by variations, which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously.' "These elaborately constructed forms [the birds, plants, insects, worms of the tangled bank'] have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction, Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction, Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse, a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted

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2

1 This statement is taken in substance from Mr. A. R. Wallace's Darwinism, pp. 10, seq.

Origin of Species, conclus., p. 421, pop. ed. The 1st ed. was published 1859. Mr. A. R. Wallace had published the same view at the same time and in complete independence of Darwin.