ABSTRACT
Marx greeted Darwin's theory of evolution as a "support from natural science". And the general Marxian opinion, expressed in numberless articles and pamphlets, is that Darwin's discovery was "a glorious corroboration and completion of the Marxian theory". Engels said, a little more temperately, that Marx's theory was "destined to do for history what Darwin's theory has done for biology". It seems as though Engels' prediction might prove true-although not in the manner he anticipated. For if any one thing is conceded by all biologists to-day, it is that Darwin's theory is not an adequate explanation of the process of organic evolution. Darwin approached the problem of explaining evolution without any political purpose or passion. Darwin also approached his problem of evolution without any metaphysical presupposition as to the manner in which evolution proceeds. And they taught him something quite contrary to that view of thought and the external world which lies at the bottom of the Hegelian-Marxian conception of evolution.
