Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 14.djvu/604

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586
THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.

question of the "rude physical struggle for existence." For since in the time to come each individual will develop his reason, and reason can not endure perversion or wrong, each will labor for all and all for each. Whether, instead of the present division of labor, there will be an arrangement having the same effect, but based on personal inclination and personal fitness ("Zukunft," 1878, page 704); or whether the system of alternation of work will be introduced, so that, as Engels would have it (ubi supra, page 173), the man who in the forenoon wheels a barrow is an architect in the afternoon; what is to be done when no workmen offer themselves for certain kinds of labor, while for other kinds there are too many; whether and how the workman is to be entitled to a certain measure of the means of enjoyment according to the nature of his work, or the exertions he puts forth, or his individual needs: these are all open questions. The amicable settlement of these questions presupposes, as we have already observed, a general physical and moral elevation of the individual, of which the present mean intellectual status is but a faint foretaste.

Thus Socialist Democracy demands a more equitable general division of the good things of life, that every one shall have a share in life's pleasures, and it aims to demonstrate the justice and the naturalness of the claim. We are interested in it, inasmuch as appeal is made to Darwinism for its establishment.

The revolution which goes on quietly in Christendom has appealed to the equality which exists beyond the grave. The Revolution of 1789 was more practical, and championed the natural right of the Third Estate—the right of equality and fraternity here on earth. What it was that gave this direction to the revolution, and how it expounded the return to nature and to the truth of which so much was then said, is sufficiently well known. Now, again, as the Socialist Democracy is not alone in affirming, and truly enough too perhaps, we stand on the threshold of a social overturning. Again there is question of an appeal to be made to the inborn rights of man. Next after the basic idea controlling revolution, of which we have already spoken, the Socialistic programme, like the programme of all revolutions which proceed from a general state of distress, insists on the restoration of that equality which is the strictly natural right of every man, but which has been lost, owing to unnatural and perverted social conditions.

The Socialist Democrats are not content with Brentano's view, that humanity's goal is perfection, nor with Held's, that the ideal end of progress is the highest perfectionment of all. Hence they have enlarged the idea of perfectionment by making it include a reduction of labor and an increase of bodily and intellectual enjoyment. That, in the event of a refusal to recognize the justice of this demand, force would be employed to complete its demonstration, is expressed without ambiguity. But it is easy to see how welcome it would be to the leaders of the movement could biology be ranged on their side, and