irreconcilable with, nor contradictory to, each other.

Moreover, the three principal arguments which form the substance of the
anti-socialist reasoning of Haeckel resist neither the most elementary
criticisms, nor the most superficial observation of every-day life.

These arguments are:

I.--Socialism tends toward a chimerical equality of persons and
property: Darwinism, on the contrary, not only establishes, but shows
the organic necessity of the natural inequality of the capabilities and
even the wants of individuals.

II.--In the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, the
immense majority of those who are born are destined to perish, because
only a small minority can triumph in the "struggle for existence";
socialism asserts, on the contrary, that all ought to triumph in this
struggle, and that no one is inexorably destined to be conquered.

III.--The struggle for existence assures "the survival of the best, the
victory of the fittest," and this results in an aristocratic hierarchic
gradation of selected individuals--a continuous progress--instead of the
democratic, collectivist leveling of socialism.

FOOTNOTE:

[2] Les preuves du transformisme.--Paris, 1879, page 110 _et seq._