CHAPTER X 



MUTUAL AID AS A LAW OF NATURE 



THE human race has had up to the present 

 only a vague and intuitive comprehension 

 of the advantages of association. Mutual aid 

 constitutes the solid rock upon which all the great 

 religions and systems of ethics are founded. The 

 importance of mutual aid has been expressed in 

 terms of modern scientific thought by Adam Smith, 

 who based his epoch-making work on political 

 economy — The Wealth of Nations — upon the great 

 fact of the division of labour, and made the 

 "consciousness of kind" the foundation of his 

 Theory of Moral Sentiments. Bastiat gave an 

 effective presentation to the advantages of asso- 

 ciation in his Economic Harmonies in the middle 

 of the nineteenth century. Darwin made mutual 

 aid, and the moral law which rests upon it, the 

 central principle of his theory of social progress. 

 Kropotkin in his Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution 

 has developed Darwin's thought further and has 

 given us the classic work on the subject. The 

 genius of Novikov recognized its importance and 

 made it an integral part of all his scientific 



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