320 Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature 



to gain the victory over these disadvantageous 

 conditions that mutual aid is indispensable. 



Of course struggle is a reality, but what astrono- 

 mer would be so stupid as to affirm that the celes- 

 tial systems are formed solely by centrifugal force? 

 Scientific astronomy affirms, on the contrary, that 

 the sidereal systems are the resultants of centri- 

 fugal and centripetal force, or rather of the proper 

 equilibrium between these two. In the same way 

 evolution is the result of association between 

 associable individuals as well as the struggle 

 between species which are naturally enemies. As- 

 sociation is life ; dissociation is death. Certainly 

 death is a universal phenomenon, but so is life. 

 To maintain that progress is uniquely the re- 

 sult of death and never of life, as is done in the 

 philosophy of force, is unsustainable. 



The philosophy of force is the negation of soci- 

 A ology because it denies that association is one of 

 the fundamental phenomena of the science. When 

 it is affirmed that progress results from homicide, 

 this amoimts to the claim that progress results from 

 dissociation. Moreover, homicide is a physio- 

 logical act; since it is the suppression of the life 

 of an individual . From this special point of view, 

 therefore, the philosophy of force is the negation 

 of sociology because it attributes all progress not 

 to the complex play of social facts (which reduce 

 themselves in the last analysis to interpsychic 

 facts) but to a physiological fact. In reality 

 sociology is the science of human symbiosis — the 



