ABSTRACT
The justification of a difference occurring in retrospect, far beyond the natural equality at birth, is reinforced in the second half of the nineteenth century after the publication of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, who introduces the principle of natural evolution and significantly changes the ideological balance of bourgeois ethics. The gradual loss of interest in the fate of the individual in the latter part of the nineteenth century indicates a marked shift of attention to more social issues, to which the theory of Darwin and the subsequent birth of the Social Darwinism offer a scientific justification. Meanwhile, the fervour of scientific studies, in the wake of Charles Darwin and the theory of evolution, carries out a diverse set of more or less successful attempts to apply an alleged scientific attitude to politics and society, combining physiocracy and ideology, biology and ethics.
