Darwin, Marx, and Warranted Progress

Abstract

No doubt, it was a sign of not little civil courage if one dared to voice such thoughts in the Germany of 1863. More remarkable, however, is the identity of the person who uttered them and the occasion he chose to deliver such a statement. The sentences quoted are from the opening address to the 38th Conference of German Natural Researchers and Physicians (Versammlung deutscher Naturforscher und Ärzte), given by the morphologist and embryologist Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919). The topic of his speech was, of course, not the political situation of the German states still shaped by the restoration following the failed revolution of 1848. Rather, he was talking about the theory of evolution that Charles Darwin (1809–1882) had published in his Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection from 1859. Haeckel was at that time the most active and influential German propagandist of Darwin’s theory, which had already stirred many disputes in Germany, among scientists as well as within the broader public, by the early 1860s.² But, as the quotation shows, what Haeckel also propagated was the belief that Darwin had established and proved a “law of progress” for the realm of living beings and furthermore, that this law ruled the history of mankind.

This is the translation of a slightly revised article with the title “Darwin, Marx und der garantierte Fortschritt: Materialismus und Entwicklungsdenken im 19. Jahrhundert” published in: Arndt, Andreas and Jaeschke, Walter (eds.): Materialismus und Spiritualismus. Hamburg 2000.1 wish to thank the editors for granting permission to this republication.