BIOLOGY AND HUMAN TRENDS — PEARL 329 



by altruism or " mutual aid " as it has been called, we may be sure, I 

 think, that one or the other of two things has happened. Either, as 

 among the invertebrates (especially the social insects) and the lower 

 vertebrates, the " mutual aid " is not individually motivated but is a 

 mechanistic group consequence of caste differentiation and integra- 

 tion, with no more (and no less) of an altruistic element in it than 

 there is in the cellular differentiation and integration in the em- 

 bryonic development of the individual; or, as in man and to some 

 extent among his nearest relatives, complex psychological elements 

 have been added to the picture in the course of evolution, which may 

 seem at times to overwhelm and obliterate the more primitive and 

 deeply rooted biological urge. The most obvious of these added 

 factors amounts really to a more enlightened self-interest — that is 

 to say, a belief that for the present and until times get much worse 

 it will be likely to conduce more effectively to individual survival to 

 play along with and help one's neighbors in the crowd. 



This statement is, from the necessity of brevity, much too bald and 

 apparently dogmatic in its form and want3 more explanatory eluci- 

 dation and development than we shall have time to give it. But I 

 think it essentially conforms to at least a part of the reality. It is 

 reasonable to suppose that the individual soldier ant is unaware of 

 the fact that its activities and efforts are of benefit to the social 

 group (the colony) to which it belongs. On the contrary, it seems 

 likely that when it fights it does so because it is its inherent and 

 entailed nature so to do. In fighting it is expressing its own will 

 to live or urge to survival, and in the only way of which it is capable. 

 On the human side, in thinking of the personal motivation of altru- 

 istic behavior I am always reminded of a speech of Brotteaux in 

 Les Dieux ont Soif, perhaps the greatest novel Anatole France 

 ever wrote. It is (I quote from Allinson's translation) : 



What I am doing now, the merit of which you exaggerate, is not done for 

 any love of you, for indeed, albeit you are a lovable man, * * * j know you 

 too little to love you. Nor yet do I act so for love of humanity ; for I am not 

 so simple as to think * ♦ * that humanity has rights. * * * I do it 

 out of that selfishness which inspires mankind to perform all their deeds of 

 generosity and self-sacrifice, by making them recognize themselves in all who 

 are unfortunate, by disposing them to commiserate their own calamities in the 

 calamities of others and by inciting them to offer help to a mortal resembling 

 themselves in nature and destiny, so that they think they are succoring 

 themselves in succoring him. 



Man's behavior, and particularly his social behavior, is motivated 

 by so complex a set of physiological and psychological factors, appe- 

 tites, emotions, and reasons, as to be extremely difficult to disentangle 

 in a particular instance. But it may safely be said that when- 

 ever he curbs his primal urge to personal survival, he does it for 



