3i6 Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature 



advance over previous conditions could take place 

 as the result of a struggle which means weakness 

 and retrogression for all the individuals compelled 

 to submit to this struggle. Whenever advance 

 takes place it must be because of factors other 

 than struggle. It must be as the result of an 

 exaltation of life and well-being, and the most 

 effective way of increasing this well-being and 

 intensity of life is through mutual aid. At the 

 very most then, struggle can only serve to select 

 out advances which have been made as a result of 

 other factors, especially mutual aid, and it is in 

 this factor that the cause of progress must be 

 found. 



As a result of the exaltation of struggle as the 

 summum honum by its fervent and enthusiastic 

 worshippers, the dominant philosophy of the 

 Western civilization has tended to become largely 

 a philosophy of despair, of pain, and of suffering. 

 But with the scientific study of social facts, with 

 the discovery that the role of association and 

 mutual aid is much more important than that of 

 struggle, and that both these are subsidiary to the 

 great evolutionary principle of the expansion of 

 life, will come a return to the philosophy of happi- 

 ness, of hope, and of progress. This result in social 

 theory will be one of the most important gains of 

 the intellectual revolution. 



Proceeding from the idea that struggle is the 

 cause of progress, the philosophy of force has con- 

 cluded that the greater the intensity of the struggle 



