BIOLOGY AND SOCIOLOGY 93 



been used as justification for three totally different 

 and indeed incompatible political doctrines. In Eng- 

 land, it has served chiefly to bolster up laissez-faire 

 individualism and free competition. In Germany 

 in the years immediately succeeding the publication 

 of the Origin of Species, it was seized upon by the 

 Socialists as implying equal opportunity for all as 

 against feudalism or hereditary aristocracy. Later 

 in the same country (and to a certain extent else- 

 where) it was abundantly employed as a theoretical 

 support for militarism. 



As a matter of fact, the use of it as sole principle 

 governing the interrelation of biological units is 

 wholly unjustified. As has been shown by a number 

 of writers, among whom may especially be men- 

 tioned Darwin himself, Ritchie in his Darwinism 

 and Politics, and Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid, 

 the struggle for existence is only one of two possi- 

 bilities in this relationship: the other is that of co- 

 operation, of mutual aid, which is especially well 

 marked in the building up of higher-grade units from 

 a multiplicity of smaller lower-grade ones. Two of 

 the most important steps in the whole evolutionary 

 process have been based on the co-operation of units 

 — the origin of multicellular from unicellular organ- 

 isms, and the development of true man, with his so- 

 cial life, from his pre-human ancestor. It is also 

 prominent in the lives of many species of the high- 

 est groups — insects, mammals, and birds: witness 

 the ants and bees, the rook, the wild dog, the ele- 



