334 Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature 



evolution of the human race, that it has been main- 

 tained by mankind up to the present time, notwith- 

 standing all the vicissitudes of history. It was chiefly 

 evolved during periods of peace and prosperity; but 

 when even the greatest calamities befell men — when 

 whole countries were laid waste by wars, and whole 

 populations were decimated or groaned under the 

 yoke of tyranny — the same tendency continued to 

 live in the villages and among the poorer classes in 

 the towns ; it still kept them together, and in the long 

 run it reacted even upon those ruling, fighting, and 

 devastating minorities which dismissed it as senti- 

 mental nonsense. And whenever mankind had to 

 work out a new social organization, adapted to a new 

 phase of development, its constructive genius always 

 drew the elements and the inspiration for the new 

 departure from that same ever-living tendency. New 

 economical and social institutions, in so far as they 

 were a creation of the masses, new ethical systems, and 

 new religions, all have originated from the same source, 

 and the ethical progress of our race, viewed in its broad 

 lines, appears as a gradual extension of the mutual- 

 aid principles from the tribe to always larger and larger 

 agglomerations so as to finally embrace one day the 

 whole of mankind, without respect to its divers 

 creeds, languages, and races. ^ 



And he shows the vital importance of mutual 

 aid as the foundation of ethics and of all religions : 



However, it is especially in the domain of ethics 

 that the dominating importance of the mutual-aid 



' Kropotkin, Mutual Aid a Factor of Evolution, chapter vii., 

 ''Mutual Aid Amongst Ourselves," p. 223. 



