304 Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature 



writings. Yet the work of creating a widespread 

 understanding of the importance of this central 

 fact of social evolution has hardly been begun. 



Because men have not realized the benefits 

 of association, those who affirm the existence of 

 economic harmonies and the advantages of univer- 

 sal justice are considered idealists and visionaries. 

 But when men comprehend scientifically that 

 association results in life more abundant for the 

 individuals who form the association, when they 

 are intellectually convinced that in the end associ- 

 ation is life and that mutual aid and the moral 

 law alone make society possible, and are solely a 

 means to the highest possible life for the individual, 

 then those individuals who affirm the existence of 

 these harmonies and the advantages of justice 

 will be considered the true realists. The apostles 

 of antagonism and the advocates of the philosophy 

 of force will then be considered the visionaries, 

 because they do not see phenomena as they exist 

 in nature, but see them only darkly through a 

 distorting glass of medieval conceptions. 



The philosophy of force, in assigning all progress 

 to mutual struggle, ignores entirely association, 

 although it is one of the most extended phenomena 

 of nature. If progress results from struggle, it 

 must resiilt, in fact, from antagonism. But antago- 

 nism is opposed to solidarity and consequently to 

 association. As a result it ought to follow logi- 

 cally that the less the association we have, the 

 greater the progress. But this conclusion ignores 



