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.
Norway grew weary of Swedish dominance and decided to achieve national independence. At once the Swedish Bourgeoisie began to gird up its loins for a bloody dynastic war. The pampered sons of its aristocracy, unable to do anything useful, were to have glory thrust upon them, commanding, from the rear, regiments of Swedish workers to slaughter and be slaughtered by their exploited Norwegian brothers. But while these sinister preparations were in full blast, a vast army of Norwegians crossed the boundary line into Sweden and met a Swedish army of the same proportions. There was no blood-shedding for both armies were unarmed. In place of bayonets and needle guns they had their wives and children. They fraternized; they clasped hands; they tossed each other’s babies in their arms. From that moment war was impossible. They carried neither the national banner of Sweden nor of Norway. Over both those great armies, now become one, singing their songs of working class solidarity, there floated the red flag of the social revolution.
II.
LINNAEUS TO LAMARCK.
For a hundred years the word “progress” has been a word to conjure with. No proposal is too reactionary to be put forward in its name and the self-admitted conservative explains that he only wishes to “conserve” the good things which progress has bestowed upon us. It has been invoked on all sides of all questions, and no superstition was so ancient or absurd, no theory so exploded, but it could be revived under a new name and presented to the world as an infallible sign of the progress of the age.
But during the last century men have arisen, who were dissatisfied with a term that covered everything and meant nothing, and who were determined to find out what constituted progress and whether it had any existence in the world of reality. More has been accomplished in this respect during that century than in all the combined previous existence of the human race. The conception or idea of progress is the mental reflection of the process of evolution, which operates everywhere to the remotest niche or cranny in the material universe. The only difference between progress and evolution is that evolution is a more inclusive term, including as it does phenomena which we should call retrogressive.
The men who laid the foundations of modern knowledge, and imparted sense and force to hitherto meaningless terms, were they who threw aside theological phantasms and metaphysical speculations and set themselves the task of gathering the facts and ascertaining the laws of the real—the material—world. This is the method of science, and it is to this method that we owe all our knowledge of world problems.
For more than a thousand years this method was practically suspended. Any attempt, during that period, to make use of it was rigorously suppressed, except among the pagan Arabians. Biological science stood still, scarcely even marking time. Says Packard “After Aristotle, no epoch-making zoologist arose until Linnaeus was born,” a yawning chasm of thirteen hundred years.
Linnaeus, born 1707, in Sweden, was the greatest naturalist of his time and might have done greater things for evolutionary ideas had it not been for the theological influences which restrained him. But, hindered as he was, he accomplished enough to entitle him to a place among the immortals. “He found botany a chaos,” says Prof. Thatcher, “and left it a unity.” His contribution to science consists mainly in his system of classification and nomenclature. Before Linnaeus nobody had been able, though many had tried, to group and name animal and vegetable forms in such a manner as to rescue them from utter confusion. This is precisely what Linnaeus did when, by a happy idea, he adopted what is called the “binary nomenclature.”