Mutual Aid 451 



offensive to many people. As was to be expected, many 

 objected on the ground that the cruehy of nature could not 

 be reconciled with God's goodness or with the Christian 

 counsel of kindness and forbearance. Many others, who 

 were quite ready to accept the general theory of evolution, 

 were estranged by the implied justification of brutality and 

 selfishness as the essentials of " success " in life. 



Naturalists as well as students of society had already 

 noted the remarkable development of mutual aid, coopera- 

 tion and social living among certain insects, among birds and 

 among mammals. Certainly the members of a beehive are not 

 in competition with one another. On the contrary, the exer- 

 tions of the individual are obviously calculated to help the 

 whole community. Similarly, the members of a flock of 

 geese, or a pack of wolves, or a herd of wild cattle, or a 

 rookery, are quite as much engaged in promoting the com- 

 mon welfare as they are in securing their individual survival. 



These facts could not be overlooked. While they seem 

 to mitigate the supposed glorification of selfishness and 

 cruelty, so far as the natural order of things might carry 

 moral implications, they could be assimilated to the doctrine 

 of natural selection without great difficulty. The evolution 

 of simple forms proceeded from the one-celled to the many- 

 celled, with division of labor and progressive specialization of 

 function. Similarly at higher levels, there was integration 

 of individuals because of advantages gained from division 

 of labor and mutual exchange of services. The evolution of 

 the societal group, in other words, can be understood as 

 the result of natural selection exactly as can the evolution 

 of more and more complex organisms from simpler ances- 

 tors. The only difference lies in shifting the incidence of 

 advantage from the individual to the group. Natural selec- 

 tion will eliminate tho.se hives of bees, those colonies of birds, 

 those packs of wolves, in which the individual conducts 

 himself, because of his native constitution, in a manner det- 

 rimental to the welfare of the group. The principle of 

 natural selection lends itself as well to the use of a Fiske, who 



