"Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast The little tyrant of his field withstood, Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest, Some Cromwell, guiltless of his country's blood." --Stanzas from GRAY'S "Elegy in a Country Church-yard." Translator. [12] "Cursed be the gold that gilds the straighten'd forehead of the fool!" --Tennyson, in "Locksley Hall." "Gold, yellow, glittering, precious gold! Thus, much of this will make black, white; foul, fair; Wrong, right; base, noble; old, young; coward, valiant." --Shakespeare, in "Timon of Athens."--Translator. 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 can beget is very small and most of them survive. But, moreover, in the cases of all three, vegetables, animals and men, we find that it is the lower and more simply organized species, the races and classes less advanced in the scale of existence, who reproduce their several kinds with the greatest prolificness and in which generation follows generation most rapidly on account of the brevity of individual life. A fern produces millions of spores, and its life is very short--while a palm tree produces only a few dozen seeds, and lives a century. A fish produces several thousand eggs--while the elephant or the chimpanzee have only a few young who live many years. Within the human species the savage races are the most prolific and their lives are short--while the civilized races have a low birth-rate and live longer.