78 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



importance of group or tribal cohesion as a factor of success in inter- 

 tribal struggle, (2) the importance of sympathy as a factor in group 

 cohesion, (3) the importance of mutual fidelity and unselfish courage, 

 and (4) the great part played by sensitiveness to praise and blame in 

 developing both unselfish courage and fidelity. In terms of these four 

 facts, Mr. Darwin finds an answer to the question, how, within the 

 conditions fixed by a struggle for existence, social and moral qualities 

 could tend slowly to advance and to be diffused throughout the world. 



That the studies of both Mr. Bagehot and Mr. Darwin left much 

 still to be said on the subject of group feeling and cooperative solidarity 

 was shown when, in 1890, Prince Peter Alekseevich Kropotkin pub- 

 lished in The Nineteenth Century his fascinating articles on " Mutual 

 Aid among Animals," afterwards supplemented by studies of mutual 

 aid among savages and among barbarians. These articles contained 

 nothing essentially new in theory, but they contributed to our knowledge 

 an immense mass of facts demonstrating how great has been the part 

 played by sympathy and helpfulness in the struggle for existence, and 

 how inadequate would be any interpretation of natural selection which 

 accounted for it wholly in terms of superior strength, cruelty and 

 cunning. 



Mr. Darwin never claimed to offer an adequate explanation of the 

 variations which natural selection preserves or rejects. He sometimes 

 took them for granted, he sometimes spoke of them as accidental or 

 fortuitous. He would have been the last to pretend that he had told 

 us all that we should like to know about the beginnings of sympathy or 

 of sensitiveness to praise or blame. But, starting from sympathy and 

 the desire for approval as traits that may actually be observed among 

 gregarious creatures, and that presumably have somehow had a natural 

 origin, Darwin and Kropotkin convincingly demonstrate that groups 

 possessing these qualities have a certain advantage in the struggle 

 for life. 



To account more fully for the origins, in distinction from the nat- 

 ural selection of the social qualities, was the problem that Mr. John 

 Piske attacked in his theory of the effects of prolonged infancy, first 

 published in the North American Review of October, 1873, 3 and a year 

 later in the " Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy." Fiske discriminates 

 between " gregariousness " and " sociality," without, however, suffi- 

 ciently analyzing the one or the other, or quite defining the difference. 

 By sociality he seems to mean a relatively high development of sym- 

 pathy, affection and loyalty to kindred or comrades. He argues that 

 sociality has its origin in small and permanent family groups. These 

 are not necessarily monogamous at first. They may be polygamous 

 or polyandrian, and may broaden out into clans. But they must be 

 more enduring than matings observed in the merely gregarious herd. 



3 Under the title : " The Progress from Brute to Man." 



