March. 1928 



EVOLUTION 



Page Thrke 



Thomas H. Huxley and Peter Kropotkin 



By Alexander Goldenweiser 



THE advent of evolution was like the explosion of a 

 bombshell in a hostile camp. The adherents of the 

 doctrine of the immutability of species, the representa- 

 tives of orthodox theology, all those — among scientists, 

 laymen and clergy alike — who had vested interests in 

 these doctrines, were up in arms. Once more dogma and 

 complacency were shaken unto their very foundations. 



In an emergency such as this courage, energy and en- 

 thusiasm were needed to take up the cudgels for the new- 

 doctrine. These qualities were possessed to a remark- 

 able degree by Thomas H.i 

 Huxley, eminent biologist in 

 liis own right, friend of 

 Charles Darwin and Her- 

 bert Spencer. He took up 

 the fight where Darwin had 

 left it. Eminent divines and 

 silver tongued prime minis- 

 ters like Gladstone presentlv 

 found their biblical quota- 

 lions and oratorical fire- 

 Ijrands countered by uncom- 

 promising facts from the 

 biological laboratory butt- 

 ressed by logical rigor. 

 Huxley was a fighter. What 

 Darwin had done in his 

 Descent of Man with cau- 

 tion and timidity, Huxlev 

 did in his Mans Place In 

 Nature, an outspoken and 

 merciless pamphlet, in 

 which he brought together 

 the evidence of comparati\e 

 anatomy, embryology and 

 physiology, to the eflfect that 

 man was but the last link 

 in the animal chain, that 



the differences between man and the anthropoid apes — 

 the gorilla, chimpanzee, orang-utang and gibbon — were 

 slighter than those separating the anthropoids from the 

 monkeys. There was no gainsaying these carefullv mar- 

 shalled facts. In his Darwinian essays, given as lectures 

 to groups of workingmcn. Huxley was spreading the new 

 doctrine among the wider groups of the semi-educated. 



At the fighting front caution is thrown aside and limit- 

 ing "huts" and "ifs" are easilv forgotten. This hap- 

 pened in the case of evolution. The doctrine of natural 

 selection as sponsored by Huxley, assumed the character 

 of a struggle to the death in nature, a struggle of tooth 

 and claw, in which the weaker perished and the victors 



survived over the dismembered bodies of their victims. 

 Darwin had never intended to emphasize the struggle 

 element to such an extent, especially not the feature of 

 its ferocity. But the picture drawn by Huxley had dra- 

 matic appeal and it was taken up by less scrupulous 

 popularizers who distorted it still further. From that 

 time on the biologically inspired doctrine of struggle, 

 in which the weak perished and power conquered, ex- 

 ercised a sinister influence on sociological and political 

 thought — as. for example, in the doctrines of Cumpto- 



wics and his disciple Ralz- 

 enhofer, the Austrian socio- 

 logists. The struggle of men 

 and nations for survival, for 

 conquest, was but a sequel 

 of that vaster struggle al- 

 ways carried on in nature 

 in the form of natural selec- 

 tion. 



This exaggeration of the 

 Darwinian theory was coun- 

 tered by Peter Kropotkin. 

 anarchist, geologist and am- 

 ateur biologist, in his fas- 

 cinating book Mutual Aid 

 in Evolution. In die pages 

 of this remarkably detailed 

 and erudite study, Kropot- 

 kin pointed out that the other 

 factor in biological prog- 

 ress, a factor lost sight of 

 in the Darwin-Huxley the- 

 ory, was co-operation, mut- 

 ual aid. Through co-opera- 

 tion weaker animals such as 

 wild horses, asses and goats, 

 managed to survive and 

 multiply in the face of the 

 depredations of their more powerful preying foes. Kro- 

 potkin also made the important point that the "struggle"' 

 was not so much between species and species, as it was 

 of animals against nature, physical environment, cliniale. 

 and that it was in this latter kind of struggle that the fit- 

 ter survived. Not satisfied with having demonstrated ihe 

 importance of mutual aid in the animal kingdom, Kro- 

 potkin carried his researches further into the field of 

 primitive society and thence to the cities of medie\al 

 Europe and modern workers' co-operatives. Kropotkin's 

 well documented and brilliant book serves as a necessarv 

 counter-poise to the one sided distortions of the original 

 Darwinian doctrine. 



Thomas H. Huxlev 



■'The only question which any wise man can ask himself, and 

 wliich any honest man will a?k himself, is whether a doctriru- 

 is true or false." — Tliomas Huxley. 



« * « 



■"Whatever happens, science may bide her time in patience and 

 in confidence." — Tliomas Huxley. 



"Thoughtful men. once escaped from the blinding influences 

 of traditional prejudice, will find in the lowly stock whence Man 

 has sprung the best evidence of the splendor of his capacities; 

 and will discern in his long progress through the Past a reason- 

 able ground of faith in his attainment of a nobler Future." — 

 Thomas Huxley. 



