MUTUAL AID.

Exaggeration in politics may be explained, if not excused, by the necessity of appealing to an electorate most easily captured by the vivid presentation of extremes. We seldom find such antitheses in the more self-contained world of science. We do find them in controversies in which the representatives of science and of some other great human activity set up theirs as the only method of explaining the mysteries of the universe. Such disputes are fortunately rare, and occur only after some such epoch-making discovery as Darwin revealed to the world. Then the pugnacity of Wilberforce and Huxley drew attention to that aspect of the evolutionary theory which made the divergence between the current teaching of religion and science most apparent, and laid most emphasis on the non-moral aspect of life as a struggle in all existence. Nature appears "red in tooth and claw" to the poet who reflects most accurately the recoil of his earnest and uncritical contemporaries, and Darwin himself allowed ten years to elapse before he pointed out the mistake of his interpreters. By general consent the Evolutionists were victorious, but theirs was only a Pyrrhic victory, for their theory left unexplained all the aspirations of good and the belief in its attainment that exist in every human being. The better half of life had been hidden from them, who saw nature as an immense battlefield upon which nothing goes on but the extermination of the weak by the strong, the swift, and the cunning. And so the triumph of science was followed by a reaction which, beginning as a protest against some of the claims of "naturism," ultimately became a campaign against positive knowledge altogether. From the attempt and failure of science to solve all problems by one formula the bankruptcy of science was confidently announced, and another false antithesis created by a crusade in favour of intuitionism and blind faith, which ended by dividing the world of thought into the two camps of science and mysticism. The reaction went much further than its movers intended, but before it had developed Darwin had pointed out that there is in nature itself another set of facts parallel to those of mutual struggle of equal importance, but of quite a different significance—the facts of mutual aid within the species.

This side of the Evolutionist theory has been further developed by Prince Kropotkin, a writer to whom the world has grown accustomed to listen whenever he speaks of science or ethics, and who has a paper more remarkable for learning than for clearness of argument in the current number of the "Nineteenth Century." He points out that mutual support is a much more general and more effective factor in nature than the struggle for life. It is more important because of the immense number of animals within a species, and of the number of sociable species, such as birds and bees, which do not prey upon their fellows, and more effective because it represents the best arm in the struggle against nature, which constantly requires new adaptations to the changing conditions of existence. Finally, it can be taken as proved that while the struggle for life leans indifferently forwards or backwards, mutual support is the agency which always leads to progressive development Darwin found in this instinct the origin of the family affections and the rudiments of a moral conscience. Kropotkin shows that upon this foundation the higher sense of justice and equity has been built up. We get rid of the notion that in the animal world "might is the only right" when we know that scores of thousands of different aquatic birds come together on the slopes of mountains without fighting for the best position, that several flocks of pelicans will feed side by side with each other in their separate fishing grounds, and that hundreds of different species come to some arrangement, which they respect, concerning their night quarters and their hunting grounds. A sense of the value of social accommodation is revealed by this observation, and when we see that a young bird which has stolen some straw from another's nest is attacked by all the birds of the same colony we discern in its origin the value of justice to a community. Going one step further, Kropotkin finds in the animal world the first example of ethical feelings more complex than justice or family affection, as in the highest representatives of every species the identification of the individual with the group and the need of eventual sacrifice for it become more fully developed.

Science, therefore, can tell a world that refuses to base its theory of life on anything but experience that mutual aid and self-sacrifice are just as essential to progress as fitness to take part in the struggle for existence. It shows that there is one origin for two apparently contradictory instincts—the instinct to subdue other men and the desire for fellowship and sympathy. Science shows the necessity of a synthesis between the two, and the history of modern thought is filled with instances of reaction following on the omission to keep both instincts in view. But though in animal life it has been usual to exaggerate the importance of a struggle, in human affairs the tendency has been to prophesy a still more complete absorption of the individual in society. Hence the extreme attitude of men like Spencer and his sensational contemporary, Nietzsche, who declared that all morality must be thrown overboard if it can show no better foundation than the sacrifice of the individual on behalf of the race. Men cling to personality as the one thing certain in a fluid world, and revolt against any theory that scorns to lessen its importance. The business of scientific ethics is to show that no progress has ever been made in any branch of life unless the individualistic and social instincts are co-ordinate, that no fulness of life is attainable on the path of disregard for others, and no progress where the rights of one individual are not considered as unassailable as the personal rights of every other. The antithesis between socialism and individualism is false because each of the extremes neglects what is essential. The problem is not to exterminate one or the other, but to impress on the socialist the value of freedom and self-reliance, and on the individualist the place of mutual support as a condition of progress. It is not possible for ethics to enforce this or any other doctrine, but it may be possible by exhibiting a system based on experience and free from contradiction to create such an atmosphere in society as would produce in the greater number of men entirely by impulse those actions which best lead to the welfare of all and the happiness of every separate being.

 The Sydney Morning Herald 10 September 1904,