vanquished in the struggle for existence--these will be the victims of
weakness, of disease, of dissipation, of nervous disorders, of suicide.
We may then affirm that socialism does not deny the Darwinian law of the
struggle for existence. Socialism will, however, have this indisputable
advantage--the epidemic or endemic forms of human degeneracy will be
entirely suppressed by the elimination of their principal cause--the
physical poverty and (its necessary consequence) the mental suffering of
the majority.

Then the struggle for existence, while remaining always the driving
power of the life of society, will assume forms less and less brutal and
more and more humane. It will become an intellectual struggle. Its ideal
of physiological and intellectual progress will constantly grow in
grandeur and sublimity when this progressive idealization of the ideal
shall be made possible by the guarantee to every one of daily bread for
the body and the mind.

The law of the "struggle for life" must not cause us to forget another
law of natural and social Darwinian evolution. It is true many
socialists have given to this latter law an excessive and exclusive
importance, just as some individuals have entirely neglected it. I refer
to the law of solidarity which knits together all the living beings of
one and the same species--for instance animals who live gregariously in
consequence of the abundance of the supply of their common food
(herbivorous animals)--or even of different species. When species thus
mutually aid each other to live they are called by naturalists
_symbiotic_ species, and instead of the struggle for life we have
co-operation for life.

It is incorrect to state that the struggle for life is the sole