HISTORY AND NATURAL HISTORY 2? 



dress sprang the remarkable if uncritical book by 

 the Russian anarchist, Prince Kropotkin, on mutual 

 aid. (74) 



By combing the accumulated natural history rec- 

 ords, Kropotkin was able to collect observation after 

 observation which indicated that animals in nature 

 do aid each other to live, as well as, on occasion, kill 

 each other off. Kropotkin's work served the admi- 

 rable purpose of keeping this idea alive and popu- 

 larizing it. It has had also the less fortunate result 

 of bringing Kropotkin's fundamental doctrine into 

 disrepute among students who are critically sensi- 

 tive to the value of evidence, and who find that 

 Kropotkin's sources were not always reliable. 



William Patten, an American biologist who taught 

 for many years at Dartmouth College, made the next 

 general statement of the fundamental nature of co- 

 operation when in 1920 he gave it a central place 

 in his analysis of the grand strategy of evolution, (go) 

 It is of personal interest to me that at the scientific 

 meetings in 1919 at which I presented my first ex- 

 perimental results on this subject, Professor Patten 

 gave a vice-presidential address in which he outlined, 

 mainly from philosophical considerations, his con- 

 clusions concerning the importance of biological 

 co-operation. He was rightly impressed by the fact 

 that cells originally were separate, as protozoans are 



