This class, by the emancipation of science, performed a lasting service to the human race. The society in which it predominated, at once produced a prolific crop of great thinkers. Sweden had Linnaeus, England had Lyell, Germany had Goethe; but the palm fell to France. In the revolution France had suppressed the Sorbonne, that theological institution which had always shown itself the official and bitter enemy of science, and she soon after equipped scientific expeditions, which gave her the greatest thinkers of that day--Cuvier, St. Hilaire, and, most illustrious of all that courageous pioneer of modern evolution, Jean Lamarck. The position of the capitalist class of a hundred years ago was very different from that of today. Then it was the harbinger of progress; now it is the stronghold of reaction. Its interests then were very different from its interests now. Then it was called upon by destiny to steer society into new waters; now destiny bids it, since its task is done, to step aside that a new hand may grip the wheel. Then it fought a social order which had had its day, now it is in the midst of social forces which it cannot administer. That was its lusty youth; this is its doddering old age. When the Bourgeoisie released science from feudal chains, it let loose a force that carried it to victory, but, at that moment, it planted the germs of its own future destruction. Today it reverses its attitude and would fain suppress science or at least prevent its reaching the proletarian brain. But alas, it is in the grip of evolutionary processes of which it is merely a part, and it is bound, more securely than Prometheus to the rock, to a mode of production which makes the education of the proletariat a relentless necessity. The nation which keeps its working class in semi-feudal darkness is ground to pieces by the industrial competition of its neighbors--it goes to the wall in the struggle for existence. Thus, in the language of Marx, it is obliged by present necessity to dig its own future grave. The same inscrutable power that called it forth to lead society to a new triumph, now relegates it to the rear and enthrones in its place a new class, a propertyless working class, the child of the wage system, destined to emancipate itself and, by the same stroke, the whole human race. If this be not the mission of the working class, as an instrument of social evolution, the press and platform of the Socialist movement is a useless dissipation of energy. But this is precisely what Marx proved when he laid the foundation of the Socialist philosophy. Every year brings its quota of evidence that the working class is gathering the political capacity and the social intelligence necessary to equip it for this tremendous task.