The law of biological development

The law of biological development is the evolutionary principle Martin uses to attack socialist hopes for a society that protects the weak from deprivation. At an Oakland meeting, he argues that survival and the increasing strength of successive generations depend on competition, so a society that prevents the weak from perishing would frustrate development and eventually decline. The ensuing intellectual contest gives the principle its dramatic significance: Martin speaks with certainty, but his opponents make him reconsider how biological laws can be applied to social life.

The Principle Martin Invokes

Martin presents development as a process of selection. Drawing on Spencer and Malthus, he argues that in the struggle for existence the strong, and the progeny of the strong, tend to survive, while the weak and their descendants tend to perish. In his account, this unequal survival gradually increases the strength of each generation. Development is therefore not a promise that every person will flourish; it is the result of a process that eliminates those Martin calls weak or inefficient.

He treats this process as a law that political arrangements cannot simply set aside. His question to the socialists is not merely whether they want to reduce suffering, but what mechanism could replace selection and preserve collective strength if the weak no longer perish. Unless they can formulate such a mechanism, he contends, their proposed society would disable the very process on which development depends. The argument turns a biological account of change into a political test: a social ideal must explain how it will sustain the capacities of the people who compose it.

The Oakland Speech

The principle becomes a public weapon on Sunday night in a small hall crowded chiefly with working-class socialists. Martin has been listening to a speaker whose frail body prompts him to see the man as a symbol of people he considers biologically unfit. That response shapes his argument before he reaches the platform: he interprets the meeting not only as a debate about policy, but as a gathering of the weak seeking to evade the penalties of existence through cooperation.

Martin begins haltingly, organizing ideas that have surged up while the preceding speaker talked. The customary five-minute limit expires while his attack is still under way. Because the audience is engaged, it urges the chairman to let him continue. Martin speaks with fire, openly applying his description of slavery to the listeners and attacking what he sees as their morality and tactics. The biological principle is central to this provocation: he tells them that a society which gives the inefficient whatever they need and allows both weak and strong to reproduce would, in his view, stop the generations from growing stronger.

An audience member challenges him with the example of the United States. Martin answers by describing the replacement of overt rule by commercial power: after the colonies formed a republic, he argues, traders and money-lenders became a new class of masters. He accuses them of controlling judges and legislatures and points to children laboring and millions of people going without adequate shelter and food. His reply broadens the meeting’s subject. The dispute is no longer only about whether a socialist society could annul selection; Martin also insists that existing political and economic arrangements already impose hardship while disguising who holds power.

Dispute and Reconsideration

The exchange is not a lecture delivered to a passive crowd. After Martin sits down, a rush of speakers clamors for recognition, and they answer him one by one amid applause, excited gestures, and calls for order. Many address his claims directly. The meeting becomes a battle of ideas in which the audience’s response gives the principle a contested public life rather than leaving it as an abstract doctrine.

The narration distinguishes between discovering new biological laws and discovering new applications of familiar ones. Martin’s opponents do the latter, and their arguments shake him because they extend his own intellectual framework in ways he had not considered. The distinction matters: the scene does not say that he abandons the law he has cited, nor does it establish that his opponents refute it. Instead, it shows that agreement about biological principles does not settle their political meaning. The argument’s implications depend on how those principles are interpreted and applied.

Meaning and Limits in the Scene

Martin’s rhetoric treats the weak as the material that nature discards and the strong as the basis of future improvement. His image of selection through breeding racehorses and cucumbers makes the process seem deliberate and familiar, while also exposing the severity of the analogy: human society is judged through a model of choosing desirable stock. He acknowledges that a creator might have devised a better method, but insists that inhabitants of this particular cosmos must live with its laws. In his speech, that bleak premise underwrites his rejection of sentimental appeals that would protect everyone equally.

Yet the scene gives the principle no uncontested authority. Martin’s confidence meets a crowd capable of answering him, and the replies reveal applications he had missed. The narrative consequently presents the law both as the foundation of his polemic and as a framework whose social consequences remain disputed. The meeting’s intellectual disorder—voices competing for recognition, the chairman pounding for order—contrasts with the certainty of Martin’s claim that one biological law determines the fate of society. His opponents do not need to supply a new law to unsettle him; it is enough to force him to see more possibilities within the laws he already invokes.