The German Darwinians, and at their head Messrs. Oscar Schmidt and
Haeckel, immediately protested; and, in order to avert the addition of
strong political opposition to the religious, philosophical, and
biological opposition already made to Darwinism, they maintained, on the
contrary, that the Darwinian theory is in direct, open and absolute
opposition to socialism.

"If the Socialists were prudent," wrote Oscar Schmidt in the "Ausland"
of November 27, 1877, "they would do their utmost to kill, by silent
neglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically
proclaims that the socialist ideas are impracticable."

"As a matter of fact," said Haeckel,[2] "there is no scientific doctrine
which proclaims more openly than the theory of descent that the equality
of individuals, toward which socialism tends, is an impossibility; that
this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary
and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.

"Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal
possessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on
the contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply
impossible; that, in human societies, as in animal societies, neither
the rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of
all the members of a society are or ever can be equal.

"The great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory of
evolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the
theory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an original
unity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the
complexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions