78 The Biological Errors 



therefore a fallacy for "social Darwinism" to 

 assign to the struggle between individuals of the 

 same species the chief role in evolution. In reality 

 this r61e is zero in a great number of cases (among 

 the herbivorous and frugivorous animals for 

 example) and is a very subordinate role in almost 

 all cases. 



The law holds true for men as well as for animals. 

 Its application in human society is made clear by 

 another illustration from Kropotkin : 



... A number of villages in South-East Russia, 

 the inhabitants of which enjoy plenty of food, . . . 

 have no sanitary accommodation of any kind; and 

 seeing that for the last eighty years the birth-rate was 

 sixty in the thousand, while the population is now what 

 it was eighty years ago, we might conclude that there 

 has been a terrible competition between the inhabi- 

 tants. But the truth is that from year to year the 

 population remained stationary, for the simple reason 

 that one-third of the new-born died before reaching 

 their sixth month of life; one-half died within the 

 next four years, and out of each hundred born, only 

 seventeen or so reached the age of twenty. The 

 newcomers went away before having grown to be 

 competitors.^ 



What is the significance of the expression "the 

 inhabitants have no sanitary accommodation of 

 any kind?" It means simply that they do not 

 know how to struggle against the unfavourable 

 conditions of their physical environment. The 



' Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, p. 68. 



