



Produced by Charles Aldarondo Aldarondo@yahoo.com








MUTUAL AID

A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION

BY P. KROPOTKIN

1902




INTRODUCTION


Two aspects of animal life impressed me most during the journeys which I
made in my youth in Eastern Siberia and Northern Manchuria. One of them
was the extreme severity of the struggle for existence which most
species of animals have to carry on against an inclement Nature; the
enormous destruction of life which periodically results from natural
agencies; and the consequent paucity of life over the vast territory
which fell under my observation. And the other was, that even in those
few spots where animal life teemed in abundance, I failed to
find--although I was eagerly looking for it--that bitter struggle for
the means of existence, among animals belonging to the same species,
which was considered by most Darwinists (though not always by Darwin
himself) as the dominant characteristic of struggle for life, and the
main factor of evolution.

The terrible snow-storms which sweep over the northern portion of
Eurasia in the later part of the winter, and the glazed frost that often
follows them; the frosts and the snow-storms which return every year in
the second half of May, when the trees are already in full blossom and
insect life swarms everywhere; the early frosts and, occasionally, the
heavy snowfalls in July and August, which suddenly destroy myriads of
insects, as well as the second broods of the birds in the prairies; the
torrential rains, due to the monsoons, which fall in more temperate
regions in August and September--resulting in inundations on a scale
which is only known in America and in Eastern Asia, and swamping, on the
plateaus, areas as wide as European States; and finally, the heavy
snowfalls, early in October, which eventually render a territory as
large as France and Germany, absolutely impracticable for ruminants, and
destroy them by the thousand--these were the conditions under which I
saw animal life struggling in Northern Asia. They made me realize at an
early date the overwhelming importance in Nature of what Darwin
described as "the natural checks to over-multiplication," in comparison
to the struggle between individuals of the same species for the means of
subsistence, which may go on here and there, to some limited extent, but
never attains the importance of the former. Paucity of life,
under-population--not over-population--being the distinctive feature of
that immense part of the globe which we name Northern Asia, I conceived
since then serious doubts--which subsequent study has only confirmed--as
to the reality of that fearful competition for food and life within each
species, which was an article of faith with most Darwinists, and,
consequently, as to the dominant part which this sort of competition was
supposed to play in the evolution of new species.

On the other hand, wherever I saw animal life in abundance, as, for
instance, on the lakes where scores of species and millions of
individuals came together to rear their progeny; in the colonies of
rodents; in the migrations of birds which took place at that time on a
truly American scale along the Usuri; and especially in a migration of
fallow-deer which I witnessed on the Amur, and during which scores of
thousands of these intelligent animals came together from an immense
territory, flying before the coming deep snow, in order to cross the
Amur where it is narrowest--in all these scenes of animal life which
passed before my eyes, I saw Mutual Aid and Mutual Support carried on to
an extent which made me suspect in it a feature of the greatest
importance for the maintenance of life, the preservation of each
species, and its further evolution.

And finally, I saw among the semi-wild cattle and horses