Mutual aid among savages.

  • Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz', 1842-1921.
Date:
1891
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Mutual aid among savages. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES. The immense part played by mutual aid and mutual support in tbe evolution of the animal world has been briefly analysed in two preceding papers.^ We have now to cast a broad glance upon the part played by the same agencies in the evolution of mankind. We saw how few are the animal species which live an isolated life, and how numberless are those which live in societies, either for mutual defence, or for hunting and storing up food, or for rearing their offspring, or simply for enjoying life in common. We also saw that, though a good deal of warfare goes on between different classes of animals, or different species, or even different tribes of the same species, peace and .mutual support are the rule within the tribe, or the species; and that those species which best know how to combine, and to avoid competition, have the best chances of survival and of a further progressive development. They prosper, while the unsociable species decay. It is evident that it would be quite contrary to all that we know of nature if men were an exception to so general a rule : if a creature so defenceless as man was at his beginnings should have found his protection and his way to progress, not in mutual support, like other animals, but in a reckless competition for personal advantages, with no regard to the interests of the species. To a mind accustomed to the idea of unity in nature, such a proposition appears utterly indefensible. And yet, improbable and unphilosophical as it is, ikhas never found a lack of supporters. There always were writers who took a pessimistic view of mankind. They knew it, more or less superficially, through their own limited experience; they knew of history what the annalists, always watchful of wars, cruelty and oppression, told of it, and little more besides ; and they concluded that mankind is nothing but a loose aggregation of beings, always ready to fight with each other, and only prevented from so doing by the intervention of some authority. Hobbes took that position in the last century; and while some of his contemporaries endeavoured to prove that at no epoch of its existence—not even in its most primitive condition—mankind lived ‘ Nineteenth Century, September and November, 1890.