III.

THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE AND ITS VICTIMS.


Socialism and Darwinism, it is said, are in conflict on a second point.
Darwinism demonstrates that the immense majority--of plants, animals and
men--are destined to succumb, because only a small minority triumphs "in
the struggle for life"; socialism, on its part, asserts that all ought
to triumph and that no one ought to succumb.

It may be replied, in the first place, that, even in the biological
domain of the "struggle for existence," the disproportion between the
number of individuals who are born and the number of those who survive
regularly and progressively grows smaller and smaller as we ascend in
the biological scale from vegetables to animals, and from animals to
Man.

This law of a decreasing disproportion between the "called" and the
"chosen" is supported by the facts even if we limit our observation to
the various species belonging to the same natural order. The higher and
more complex the organization, the smaller the disproportion.

In fact, in the vegetables, each individual produces every year an
infinite number of seeds, and an infinitesimal number of these survive.
In the animals, the number of young of each individual diminishes and
the number of those who survive continues on the contrary, to increase.
Finally, for the human species, the number of individuals that each one