Mutual Aid and Rise of Democracy 333 



will be the establishment of democracy and religion 

 upon new and unshakable scientific foundations. 

 The philosophy of force, which is anti-democratic, 

 anti-social, and anti- Christian, has fallen like a 

 blight upon the intellectual life of Christendom 

 during the past half-century, but its effects have 

 been almost entirely confined to the aristocratic, 

 intellectual, and governing classes. The growing 

 democratic forces of the labour movement, the 

 social democracy of the European countries, and 

 the great potential forces of the rise of woman in all 

 countries of the world, represent irresistible social 

 and moral forces to which the future in great meas- 

 ure belongs, and which are still largely untouched 

 by its devastating influence. With the rise into 

 intellectual and political power of these groups, 

 bringing with them traditions of the practise of 

 mutual aid and the intuitive knowledge of its 

 advantages, we may expect also a great impetus 

 toward the establishment of a sounder social 

 philosophy, which will prepare the way for a renais- 

 sance of idealism and a reconstruction of society 

 on a truly democratic basis. 



Kropotkin, in his conclusion, has traced with 

 rare insight the manner in which the mutual-aid 

 tendency has triumphed over all the crises and 

 obstacles of the past, and its promise for the future 

 of the race: 



The mutual-aid tendency in man has so remote an 

 origin, and is so deeply interwoven with all the past 



