io8 The General Sociological Errors 



for the intensification of life, and for happiness. 

 Moreover, health is the natural condition because 

 it corresponds with the maximum of vital inten- 

 sity. If the intensity of life is not the natural 

 state then it must be feebleness of life which is 

 natural. This would mean that the natural state 

 of a living being would be to possess the weakest 

 possible amount of life, that is to say not to be 

 a living being, but this is contradictory. Growth 

 and life are therefore synonymous terms. The 

 growth is at first physiological, then economic 

 and intellectual. A person who becomes every 

 day poorer and less intelligent is in a morbid 

 state. Since mutual aid is the most effective 

 process for intensifying life, the failure to employ 

 this process results in a diminution of life and 

 therefore in a state of social disease. Therefore, 

 all hostilities between men, which have as an in- 

 evitable result a dissociation, is a diseased condi- 

 tion. It is precisely because it is a commencement 

 of dissociation and contrary to nature that homi- 

 cide is considered as immoral; for, as we shall see 

 later, ' morality, according to Darwin, is the sum of 

 rules to which we should conform ourselves in 

 order to attain the maximum of vital intensity. 



Since the state of social health for the human 

 species is in the association of all men, this is also 

 the natural state. Otherwise we should have to 

 say that the natural condition of a being is the 

 condition of disease ; i.e. , that the maximum of vital 



» See the chapter on "Darwin's Theory of Social Progress." 



