Part 11

The two chapters on “Mutual Aid in the Medieval City” treat the guild as the chief manifestation of the principle during this period. A picture is presented, in some detail of the struggle of the free cities against the increasing encroachments of the centralizing states. The medieval cities are finally defeated, the guilds destroyed, but the indestructible principle of mutual aid takes on new forms and accommodates itself to new conditions.

This brings us to the closing chapters on “Mutual Aid Among Ourselves.” The first of these two chapters is devoted almost entirely to the mutual aid habits and institutions which still survive in the present day villages of Russia, Switzerland, France and Germany. The last chapter takes up really modern instances of the principle, the first and most important are the Labor unions and their strikes, Co-operative societies, Life-boat associations, Charitable organizations.

The illustration of this principle which is cited first after the Labor union is the Socialist movement. Kropotkin presents his conception of the Socialist movement as a manifestation of mutual aid in existing society in the following eloquent passage:

“Every experienced politician knows that all great political movements were fought upon large and often distant issues, and that those of them were the strongest which provoked most disinterested enthusiasm. All great historical movements have had this character, and for our own generation Socialism stands in that case. ‘Paid agitators,’ is, no doubt, the favorite refrain of those who know nothing about it. The truth however, is that--to speak only of what I know personally--if I had kept a diary for the last twenty-four years, the reader of such a diary would have had the word ‘heroism’ constantly on his lips. But the men I would have spoken of were not heroes; they were average men, inspired by a grand idea. Every Socialist newspaper--and there are hundreds of them in Europe alone--has the same history of years of sacrifice without any hope of reward, and, in the overwhelming majority of cases, even without any personal ambition. I have seen families living without knowing what would be their food tomorrow, the husband boycotted all round in his little town for his part in the paper, and the wife supporting the family by sewing, and such a situation lasting for years, until the family would retire, without a word of reproach, simply saying: ‘Continue; we can hold out no more!’ I have seen men, dying from consumption, and knowing it, and yet knocking about in snow and fog to prepare meetings within a few weeks from death, and only then retiring to the hospital with the words: ‘Now friends I am done; the doctors say I have but a few weeks to live. Tell the comrades I shall be happy if they come to see me.’ I have seen facts that would be described as ‘idealization’ if I told them in this place; and the very names of these men, hardly known outside a narrow circle of friends, will soon be forgotten when the friends too have passed away. In fact, I don’t know myself which most to admire, the unbounded devotion of these few or the sum total of petty acts of devotion of the great number. Every quire of a penny paper sold, every meeting, every hundred votes which are won at a Socialist election, represent an amount of energy and sacrifices of which no outsider has the faintest idea. And what is now done by Socialists has been done by every popular and advanced party, political and religious, in the past. All past progress has been promoted by like men and by a like devotion.”

VII.

A REPLY TO HAECKEL.

The revolt against “authority” has been carried to ridiculous extremes. The Manchester school individualist, Herbert Spencer, and the metaphysical egoist, Max Stirner, would alike agree to the reduction of all authority to the smallest possible residue. The most reckless of their disciples, having shut out from their thoughts all communication with the world of reality, would make it impossible for six men to pull effectively on a rope because five of them would be obliged to recognize the authority of the sixth, when he, at the proper moment, should call “Heave, ho.”

To thinkers of this order, music would be impossible. Who could imagine a radical individualist bowing to a waved stick and recognizing the highly centralized authority of the “leader.” The music of the logical, authority-repudiating individualist, would be the haphazard beating of the tom-tom of the East Indian, and not the highly regulated strains of a modern orchestra.

This folly is equalled, if not out-done, by those who refuse to recognize authority in science and thought. When a man claims to have a new and fundamental discovery in astronomy, and at the same time speaks slightingly of the researches of physicists such as Newton, Kant, and Laplace, it is fairly safe to conclude that you are listening to a fool who has nothing to say worthy of a second thought. Not until one has trodden every rung of the ladder which has been previously trodden, is he able to mount a step higher. And it is the performance of this task, wholly, or at least in the first part, that constitutes the one so doing an “authority.”

How often does one hear an addle-brained, know-nothing say: “I recognize no authority; I think for myself.” How shall one think without ideas? And how is it possible to obtain ideas apart from the acquisition of knowledge? And where can knowledge be obtained except from those who have it?

All “authority” in science and thought is founded on knowledge of the subject in question. Socialists quote Karl Marx as an authority on political economy, because his writings prove that he knew more about the production and distribution of wealth than any man of his century. Lavoisier is an authority in chemistry, because he know more about the composition of substances than any three of his contemporaries.

But much confusion has been wrought, by men of undisputed authority in their own field, pronouncing positive verdicts in departments where their opinions had no value. What a great composer has to say about the value of a certain note must be respectfully considered as being of importance, but, unless he has studied geology, his opinions on the probable origin or age of the Rocky Mountains will have no more value, and may have less than those of the policeman on the nearest corner.

An excellent example of the confusion which may arise in this way, was given to the world in 1877, at the Congress of Naturalists held at Munich in September of that year. At that time the naturalists of Europe were divided into two opposing camps, one accepting and the other rejecting the Darwinian theory of “natural selection.” The leaders of both divisions were Germans, though a preponderance of the Germans favored Darwin, whilst the French, still under the influence of, or agreeing with, Flourens, although he had been dead a decade, were almost unanimously opposed.

The honors of leading the fight for Darwinism, at the Munich Congress, fell to Haeckel, and on the 18th of September he threw down the gage in a brilliant address in which he defended the ideas of the great Englishman. Haeckel also advocated the teaching of evolution in the schools. The battle raged back and forth between the two armies, until Virchow, the great pathologist, dropped a bombshell in the Congress by boldly asserting: “Darwinism leads directly to Socialism.”

Here biological arguments ceased. The only thing in order was to clear the skirts of Darwinism of the terrible charge of being socialistic. Of course this task fell to Haeckel, and he was loyally assisted by Oscar Schmidt.

Writing in “Ausland” two months later Schmidt said: “If the Socialists were prudent they would do their utmost to kill by silent neglect, the theory of descent, for that theory most emphatically proclaims that the Socialist ideas are impracticable.”

Haeckel replied to Virchow at some length, and as that reply is rather difficult to obtain I will give it here in full as quoted by Ferri, and translated by Robert Rives La Monte:

“As a matter of fact, there is no scientific doctrine which proclaims more openly than the theory of descent, that the equality of individuals, toward which Socialism tends, is an impossibility, that this chimerical equality is in absolute contradiction with the necessary and, in fact, universal inequality of individuals.

“Socialism demands for all citizens equal rights, equal duties, equal possessions and equal enjoyments; the theory of descent establishes, on the contrary, that the realization of these hopes is purely and simply impossible; that in human societies, as in animal societies, neither the rights, nor the duties, nor the possessions, nor the enjoyments of all the members of a society are or ever can be equal.

“The great law of variation teaches--both in the general theory of evolution and in the smaller field of biology where it becomes the theory of descent--that the variety of phenomena flows from an original unity, the diversity of functions from a primitive identity, and the complexity of organization from a primordial simplicity. The conditions of existence for all individuals are, from their very birth, unequal. There must also be taken into consideration the inherited qualities and the innate tendencies, which also vary more or less widely. In view of all this, how can the work and the reward be equal for all?

“The more highly the social life is developed, the more important becomes the great principle of the division of labor, the more requisite it becomes for the stable existence of the state as a whole that its members should distribute among themselves the multifarious tasks of life, each performing a single function; and as the labor which must be performed by the individuals, as well as the expenditure of strength, talent, money, etc., which it necessitates, differs more and more, it is natural that the remuneration of this labor must also vary widely. These are facts so simple and so obvious that it seems to me every intelligent and enlightened statesman ought to be an advocate of the theory of descent and the general doctrine of evolution as the best antidote for the absurd equalitarian, utopian notions of the Socialists.

“And it was Darwinism, the theory of selection, that Virchow, in his denunciation, had in mind, rather than the mere metamorphic development, the theory of descent, with which it is always confused! Darwinism is anything rather than socialistic.

“If one wishes to attribute a political tendency to this English theory--which is quite permissible--this tendency can be nothing but aristocratic; by no means can it be democratic, still less socialistic.

“The theory of selection teaches that in the life of mankind, as in that of plants and animals, it is always and everywhere a small and privileged minority alone which succeeds in living and developing itself; the immense majority, on the contrary suffer and succumb more or less prematurely. Countless are the seeds and eggs of every species of plants and animals, and the young individuals who issue from them. But the number of those who have the good fortune to reach fully developed maturity and to attain the goal of their existence is relatively insignificant.

“The cruel and pitiless ‘struggle for existence’ which rages everywhere through animated nature, and which in the nature of things must rage, this eternal and inexorable competition between all living beings is an undeniable fact. Only a small picked number of the strongest or fittest is able to come forth victoriously from this battle of competition. The great majority of their unfortunate competitors are inevitably destined to perish. It is well enough to deplore this tragic fatality, but one cannot deny or change it. ‘Many are called, but few are chosen!’

“The selection, the ‘election’ of these ‘elect’ is by absolute necessity bound up with the rejection or destruction of the vast multitude of beings whom they survived. And so another learned Englishman has called the fundamental principle of Darwinism ‘the survival of the fittest, the victory of the best.’

“At all events the principle of selection is not in the slightest degree democratic; it is, on the contrary, thoroughly aristocratic. If then, Darwinism, carried out to its ultimate logical consequences, has, according to Virchow, for the statesman ‘an extraordinarily dangerous side’ the danger is doubtless that it favors aristocratic aspirations.”

And now let us turn to the closing pages of the second volume of Haeckel’s valuable work, “The History of Creation.” We shall find it interesting and instructive to observe the nature of the argument which he there uses with great effect against Virchow. Virchow had delivered his celebrated address at Berlin, which closed as follows: “It is absolutely certain that Man is not descended from apes.”