ICROPOTKIN'S "MUTUAL AIt>'* 99 



claw." And this chamber of horrors was sup- 

 posed to support the exploitation of labor, and 

 countenance a brutalization of childhood that 

 constitutes the blackest stain on human his- 

 tory. So strong was the swirl that Huxley 

 was swept into it; but, although he main- 

 tained the "gladiatorial" view of nature, he 

 repudiated the social atrocities which capital- 

 ist apologists such as Spencer sought to de- 

 duce from it. In later years, Spencer partially 

 abandoned his premise as to the animal world 

 but, strangely enough, kept it intact for prim- 

 itive man. 



For this view of nature as full of nothing 

 but darkness and cruelty, v/here, as Hobbes 

 had put it, there waged "the war of every one 

 against everybody," the great authority of 

 Darwin was invoked. In fact, Darwin was 

 supposed to be almost solely responsible for 

 the theory, and its overthrow by Kropotkin 

 was heralded by the uninformed as another of 

 those "death-blows" of which Darwinism is 

 thought to have received so many during the 

 last quarter of a century. 



Kropotkin, however, in his introduction, 

 claims that the idea of mutual aid is "in real- 

 ity, nothing but a further development of the 

 ideas expressed by Darwin in the 'Descent of 

 Man' ". Darwin said : "Those communities 



