35.  The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 85, 95.

36.  Dr. B. Altum, Waldbeschadigungen durch Thiere und Gegenmittel (Berlin, 1889), pp. 207 seq.

37.  Dr. B. Altum, ut supra, pp. 13 and 187.

38.  A. Becker in the Bulletin de la Societe des Naturalistes de Moscou, 1889, p. 625.

39.  Russkaya Mysl, Sept. 1888:  “The Theory of Beneficency of Struggle for Life, being a Preface to various Treatises on Botanics, Zoology, and Human Life,” by an Old Transformist.

40.  “One of the most frequent modes in which Natural Selection acts is, by adapting some individuals of a species to a somewhat different mode of life, whereby they are able to seize unappropriated places in Nature” (Origin of Species, p. 145)—­ in other words, to avoid competition.

CHAPTER III

MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES

Supposed war of each against all.  Tribal origin of human society.  Late appearance of the separate family.  Bushmen and Hottentots.  Australians, Papuas.  Eskimos, Aleoutes.  Features of savage life difficult to understand for the European.  The Dayak’s conception of justice.  Common law.

The immense part played by mutual aid and mutual support in the evolution of the animal world has been briefly analyzed in the preceding chapters.  We have now to cast a glance upon the part played by the same agencies in the evolution of mankind.  We saw how few are the animal species which live an isolated life, and how numberless are those which live in societies, either for mutual defence, or for hunting and storing up food, or for rearing their offspring, or simply for enjoying life in common.  We also saw that, though a good deal of warfare goes on between different classes of animals, or different species, or even different tribes of the same species, peace and mutual support are the rule within the tribe or the species; and that those species which best know how to combine, and to avoid competition, have the best chances of survival and of a further progressive development.  They prosper, while the unsociable species decay.

It is evident that it would be quite contrary to all that we know of nature if men were an exception to so general a rule:  if a creature so defenceless as man was at his beginnings should have found his protection and his way to progress, not in mutual support, like other animals, but in a reckless competition for personal advantages, with no regard to the interests of the species.  To a mind accustomed to the idea of unity in nature, such a proposition appears utterly indefensible.  And yet, improbable and unphilosophical as it is, it has never found a lack of supporters.  There always were writers who took a pessimistic view of mankind.  They knew it, more or less superficially, through their own limited experience; they knew of history what the annalists, always watchful of wars, cruelty, and oppression, told of it, and little more besides; and they concluded that mankind is nothing but a loose aggregation of beings, always ready to fight with each other, and only prevented from so doing by the intervention of some authority.