It would then be a mistake to invoke against socialism the Darwinian law
of Natural Selection in the form under which that law manifests itself
in the primitive (or lower) forms of life, without taking into account
its continuous attenuation as we pass from vegetables to animals, from
animals to men, and within humanity itself, from the primitive races to
the more advanced races.

And as socialism represents a yet more advanced phase of human progress,
it is still less allowable to use as an objection to it such a gross and
inaccurate interpretation of the Darwinian law.

It is certain that the opponents of socialism have made a wrong use of
the Darwinian law or rather of its "brutal" interpretation in order to
justify modern individualist competition which is too often only a
disguised form of cannibalism, and which has made the maxim _homo homini
lupus_ (man to man a wolf; or, freely, "man eats man") the
characteristic motto of our era, while Hobbes only made it the ruling
principle of the "_state of nature_" of mankind, before the making of
the "social contract."

But because a principle has been abused or misused we are not justified
in concluding that the principle itself is false. Its abuse often serves
as an incentive to define its nature and its limitations more
accurately, so that in practice it may be applied more correctly. This
will be the result of my demonstration of the perfect harmony that
reigns between socialism and Darwinism.

As long ago as the first edition of my work _Socialismo e Criminalità_
(pages 179 _et seq._) I maintained that the struggle for existence is a