330 Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature 



struggle left to welter in dire poverty? They would 

 the sooner die out. Were housing conditions a 

 disgrace to civilization? They were the natural en- 

 vironment of an unfit class, and the means whereby 

 such a class prepared the way for its own extinction. 

 Was infant mortality excessive? It weeded out the 

 sickly and the weaklings. Was there pestilence or 

 famine? So many more of the unfit would perish. 

 Did tuberculosis claim a heavy toll? The tubercu- 

 losis germs are great selectors, skilled at probing the 

 weak spots of living tissue. Were there wars and 

 rumours of wars? War alone would give to the 

 conquering race its due, the inheritance of the earth. 

 It would maintain the efficiency of the stronger and 

 erase the less fit from the roll of nations. In a word 

 the only blot that the evolutionist could see upon the 

 picture was the misguided enthusiasm, the "maudlin 

 sentiment," to use a favourite expression, which 

 seeks to hold out a hand to those who are down, and 

 to prolong the life of those who are proved unfit to 

 exist by the fact of their ill success in the struggle.^ 



The fallacy in this harsh reasoning has been 

 -' exposed by Darwin. Mutual aid is the great sur- 

 vival factor in human society and the possibility 

 of mutual aid is due to certain social qualities, 

 ■" without which it could not exist. Any action 

 which tends to weaken these qualities, by harden- 

 ing the sympathies of the individual and lowering 

 / the moral standards of society, interferes with the 

 action of association and prevents the benefit 



' L. T. Hobhouse, Social Evolution and Political Theory, pp. 

 20-2I. 



