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MUTUAL AID
MUTUAL AID
Some press ©ptntons
The Athenaeum : Prince Kropotkin has written a most suggestive and stimulating study, showing not only immense range of reading and observation, and the power of marshaUing facts in an orderly manner, but also a most attractive and generous personality, demon¬ strating unconquerable faith in the innate goodness of humanity and its golden future.
The Review of Reviews : There are few more delight¬ ful books to read than Mutual Aid as a Factor in Evolution." It is a good, healthy, cheerful, delightful book, which does one good to read.
Nature: The book is undeniably readable through¬ out. l‘he author has a creed which he preaches with I all the fervour of genuine conviction. He is anxious to make converts, but his zeal never leads him to forget (airness and courtesy. Those who disagree with hjm may learn much by studying the book.
The Speaker : Prince Kropotkin has done an import¬ ant service to sound thinking on questions of sociology.
The British "Weekly : The array of facts from all departments of life which he here collects is overwhelm¬ ing. To most readers the facts adduced from mediaeval history and from modern conditions will be new. It will he for scientific readers to adjust the burden borne by each of the factors in evolution, but that mutual aid is an essential and important factor no one can doubt who reads this book. Though so full of facts, it is never tedious and never dry, but carries the reader with it.
The Clarion: If I described this new work of Prince Kropotkin's as the most important English book pub¬ lished for several years, I should not be guilty of excels. If any work of like value has appeared within the last ten years, I do not remember it. Read it ! Read it !
London: WILLIAM HEINEMANN
MUTUAL AID
M
A FACTOR OF EVOLUTION
BY
P. KROPOTKIN
AUTHOR or
“THE great FRENCH REVOLUTION,*' ETC
RruheJ and Cheaper Edition
LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
aREAT .rtir,].'.
30^
Knn
First Edition^ j>rice •js. Sd.^ 1902 Second Impression.^ ,, ,, 19®3
Revised and Cheaper Edition:, 3»y. fid. 1904 Fevtf Impression, 1907, 1908, 1910, 1914.
Copyright 190a hy William Heinemnnn
CONTENTS
PA«B
Introduction . . . , . . . . vii
CHAPTER I
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
Struggle for existence. — Mutual Aid — a law of Nature and chief factor of progressive evolution. — Invertebrates. — Ants and bees. — Birds : Hunting and fishing associations. — Sociability. — Mutual pro¬ tection among small birds. — Cranes ; parrots . . . . i
CHAPTER II
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS {continued)
Migrations of birds. — Breeding associations. — Autumn societies. — Mammals : small number of unsociable species. — Hunting associa¬ tions of wolves, lions, etc. — Societies of rodents ; of ruminants ; of monkeys. — Mutual Aid in the struggle for life. — Darwin’s arguments to prove the struggle for life within the species. — Natural checks to over-multiplication. — Supposed extermination of intermediate links. — Elimination of competition in Nature . . . . *32
CHAPTER III
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
Supposed war of each against all. — Tribal origin of human society. —Late appearance of the separate family. — Bushmen, Hottentots. — Australians, Papuas. — Eskimos, Aleoutes. — Features of savage life difficult to understand for the European. — The Dayak’s conception of justice. — Common law . . . . . .76
CHAPTER IV
MUTUAL AID AMONG THE BARBARIANS
The great migrations. — New organization rendered necessary. —
The village community. — Communal work. — Judicial procedure. — Inter-tribal law. — Illustrations from the life of our contemporaries. — Buryates. — Kabyles. — Caucasian mountaineers. — African stems . 115
CHAPTER V
MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITV Growth of authority in Barbarian society. — Serfdom in the villages.
— Revolt of the fortified towns : their liberation ; their charts. —
The guild. — Double origin of the free mediaeval city. — Self-jurisdic¬ tion, self-administration. — Honourable position of labour. — Trade by the guild and by the city . . . . . -253
a
-r
o
vi CONTENTS
PAGR
CHAPTER VI
MUTUAL AID IN THE MEDIAEVAL CITY {contimied)
Likeness and diversity among the mediaeval cities. — The craft- guilds ; State-attributes in each of them. — Attitude of the city towards the peasants ; attempts to free them. — The lords. — Results achieved by the mediaeval city : in arts, in learning. — Causes of decay ......... 187
CHAPTER VII
MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES
Popular revolts at the beginning of the State-period. — Mutual Aid institutions of the present time. — The village community : its struggles for resisting its abolition by the State. — Habits derived from the village-community life, retained in our modem villages. — Switzerland, France, Germany, Russia ..... 223
CHAPTER VIII
MUTUAL AID AMONGST OURSELVES {continued)
Labour-unions grown after the destmction of the guilds by the State. — Their struggles. — Mutual Aid in strikes. — Co-operation. — Free associations for various purposes. — Self-sacrifice. — Countless societies for combined action under all possible aspects. — Mutual Aid in slum-life. — Personal aid ...... 262
Conclusion . . . . . . . .293
APPENDIX
I. SWARMS OF BUTTERFLIES, DRAGON-FLIES, ETC . . 30I
II. THE ANTS ....... 302
III. NESTING ASSOCIATIONS . . . . . .304
IV. SOCIABILITY OF ANIMALS . . . .306
V. CHECKS TO OVER-MULTIPLICATION . . . .307
VI. ADAPTATIONS TO AVOID COMPETITION . . . 3IO
VII. THE ORIGIN OF THE FAMILY . . . . .313
VIII. DESTRUCTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY ON THE GRAVE . 320
IX. THE “UNDIVIDED FAMILY” ..... 320 ^X. THE ORIGIN OF THE GUILDS . . . . . 321
*^1. THE MARKET AND THE MEDIAEVAL CITY . . . 325
XIl. MUTUAL-AID ARRANGEMENTS IN THE VILLAGES OF NE-
THERLAND AT THE PRESENT DAY . .. . 327
• 329
INDEX
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 de¬ struction 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.
a
VUl
INTRODUCTION
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
INTRODUCTION
ix
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 in Transbaikalia, among the wild ruminants everywhere, the squirrels, and so on, that when animals have to struggle against scarcity of food, in consequence of one of the above-mentioned causes, the whole of that portion of the species which is affected by the calamity, comes out of the ordeal so much impoverished in vigour and health, that no progressive evolution of the species can be based upon such periods of keen competition.
Consequently, when my attention was drawn, later on, to the relations between Darwinism and Sociology, I could agree with none of the works and pamphlets that had been written upon this important subject. They all endeavoured to prove that Man, owing to his higher intelligence and knowledge, may mitigate the harshness of the struggle for life between men ; but they all recognized at the same time that the struggle for the means of existence, of every animal against all its congeners, and of every man against all other men, was “a law of Nature.” This view, however, I could not accept, because I was persuaded that to admit a pitiless inner war for life within each species, and to see in that war a condition of progress, was to admit something which not only
X
INTRODUCTION
had not yet been proved, but also lacked confirmation from direct observation.
On the contrary, a lecture “ On the Law of Mutual Aid,” which was delivered at a Russian Congress of Naturalists, in January 1880, by the well-known zoologist. Professor Kessler, the then Dean of the St. Petersburg University, struck me as throwing a new light on the whole subject. Kessler’s idea was, that besides the law of Mutual Struggle there is in Nature the law of Mutual Aid, which, for the success of the struggle for life, and especially for the pro¬ gressive evolution of the species, is far more important than the law of mutual contest. This suggestion — which was, in reality, nothing but a further develop¬ ment of the ideas expressed by Darwin himself in The Descent of —seemed to me so correct and of so great an importance, that since I became acquainted with it (in 1883) I began to collect materials for further developing the idea, which Kessler had only cursorily sketched in his lecture, but had not lived to develop. He died in 1881.
In one point only I could not entirely endorse Kessler’s views. Kessler alluded to “ parental feel¬ ing ” and care for progeny (see below. Chapter I.) as to the source of mutual inclinations in animals. How¬ ever, to determine how far these two feelings have really been at work in the evolution of sociable instincts, and how far other instincts have been at work in the same direction, seems to me a quite distinct and a very wide question, which we hardly can discuss yet. It will be only after we have well established the facts of mutual aid in different classes of animals, and their importance for evolution, that we shall be able to study what belongs in the evolution of sociable
INTRODUCTION
xi
feelings, to parental feelings, and what to sociability proper — the latter having evidently its origin at the earliest stages of the evolution of the animal world, perhaps even at the “colony-stages.” I consequently directed my chief attention to establishing first of all, the importance of the Mutual Aid factor of evolution, leaving to ulterior research the task of discovering the origin of the Mutual Aid instinct in Nature.
The importance of the Mutual Aid factor — “ if its generality could only be demonstrated ” — did not escape the naturalist’s genius so manifest in Goethe. When Eckermann told once to Goethe — it was in 1827 — that two little wren-fledglings, which had run away from him, were found by him next day in a nest of robin redbreasts {^Rothkehlchen), which fed the little ones, together with their own youngsters, Goethe grew quite excited about this fact. He saw in it a confirmation of his pantheistic views, and said : — “ If it be true that this feeding of a stranger goes through all Nature as something having the character of a general law — then many an enigma would be solved.” He returned to this matter on the next day, and most earnestly entreated Eckermann (who was, as is known, a zoologist) to make a special study of the subject, adding that he would surely come “ to quite invaluable treasuries of results ” {Gesprdche, edition of 1848, vol. iii. pp. 219, 221). Unfortunately, this study was never made, although it is very possible that Brehm, who has accumulated in his works such rich materials relative to mutual aid among animals, might have been inspired by Goethe’s remark.
Several works of importance were published in the years 1872-1886, dealing with the intelligence and the mental life of animals (they are mentioned in a
XII
INTRODUCTION
footnote in Chapter I. of this book), and three ot them dealt more especially with the subject under consideration ; namely, Les SocUtis animates, by Espinas (Paris, 1877) ; La Lutte pour 1' existence et V association pour la lutte, a lecture by J. L. Lanessan (April 1881); and Louis Buchner’s book, Liebe ttnd Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, of which the first edition appeared in 1882 or 1883, and a second, much enlarged, in 1885. But excellent though each of these works is, they leave ample room for a work in which Mutual Aid would be considered, not only as an argument in favour of a pre-human origin of moral instincts, but also as a law of Nature and a factor of evolution, Espinas devoted his main attention to such animal societies (ants, bees) as are established upon a physiological division of labour, and though his work is full of admirable hints in all possible directions, it was written at a time when the evolution of human societies could not yet be treated with the knowledge we now possess. Lanessan’s lecture has more the character of a brilliantly-laid-out general plan of a work, in which mutual support would be dealt with, beginning with rocks in the sea, and then passing in review the world of plants, of animals and men. As to Buchner’s work, suggestive though it is and rich in facts, I could not agree with its leading idea. The book begins with a hymn to Love, and nearly all its illustrations are intended to prove the existence of love and sympathy among animals. However, to reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its im¬ portance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole.
INTRODUCTION
xiii
It is not love to my neighbour — whom I often do not know at all — which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire ; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves ; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting ; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn ; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy — an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life.
The importance of this distinction will be easily appreciated by the student of animal psychology, and the more so by the student of human ethics. Love, sympathy and self-sacrifice certainly play an immense part in the progressive development of our moral feel¬ ings. But it is not love and not even sympathy upon which Society is based in mankind. It is the con¬ science — be it only at the stage of an instinct — of human solidarity. It is the unconscious recognition of the force that is borrowed by each man from the
XIV
INTRODUCTION
practice of mutual aid ; of the close dependency of every one’s happiness upon the happiness of all ; and of the sense of justice, or equity, which brings the individual to consider the rights of every other in¬ dividual as equal to his own. Upon this broad and necessary foundation the still higher moral feelings are developed. But this subject lies outside the scope of the present work, and I shall only indicate here a lecture, “Justice and Morality,” which I delivered in reply to Huxley’s Ethics, and in which the subject has been treated at some length.
Consequently I thought that a book, written on Mutual Aid as a Law of Nature and a factor of evolution, might fill an important gap. When Huxley issued, in 1888, his “ Struggle-for-life ” manifesto {Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man), which to my appreciation was a very incorrect repre¬ sentation of the facts of Nature, as one sees them in the bush and in the forest, I communicated with the editor of the Nineteenth Century, asking him whether he would give the hospitality of his review to an elaborate reply to the views of one of the most prominent Dar¬ winists ; and Mr. James Knowles received the proposal with fullest sympathy. I also spoke of it to W. Bates. “Yes, certainly; that is true Darwinism,” was his reply. “ It is horrible what ‘they’ have made of Darwin. Write these articles, and when they are printed, I will write to you a letter which you may publish.” Unfortunately, it took me nearly seven years to write these articles, and when the last was published. Bates was no longer living.
After having discussed the importance of mutual aid in various classes of animals, I was evidently bound to discuss the importance of the same factor in the evolu-
INTRODUCTION
XV
tion of Man. This was the more necessary as there are a number of evolutionists who may not refuse to admit the importance of mutual aid among animals, but who, like Herbert Spencer, will refuse to admit it for Man. For primitive Man — they maintain — war of each against all was the law of life. In how far this assertion, which has been too willingly repeated, without sufficient criticism, since the times of Hobbes, is supported by what we know about the early phases of human development, is discussed in the chapters given to the Savages and the Barbarians.
The number and importance of mutual-aid institu¬ tions which were developed by the creative genius of the savage and half-savage masses, during the earliest clan-period of mankind and still more during the next village-community period, and the immense influence which these early institutions have exercised upon the subsequent development of mankind, down to the present times, induced me to extend my researches to the later, historical periods as well ; especially, to study that most interesting period — the free mediaeval city- republics, of which the universality and influence upon our modern civilization have not yet been duly appre¬ ciated. And finally, 1 have tried to indicate in brief the immense importance which the mutual-support instincts, inherited by mankind from its extremely long evolution, play even now in our modern society, which is supposed to rest upon the principle : “ every one for himself, and the State for all,” but which it never has succeeded, nor will succeed in realizing.
It may be objected to this book that both animals and men are represented in it under too favourable an aspect ; that their sociable qualities are insisted upon, while their anti-social and self-asserting instincts are
xvi
INTRODUCTION
hardly touched upon. This was, however, unavoid¬ able. We have heard so much lately of the “ harsh, pitiless struggle for life,” which was said to be carried on by every animal against all other animals, every “ savage ” against all other “ savages,” and every civilized man against all his co-citizens — and these assertions have so much become an article of faith — that it was necessary, first of all, to oppose to them a wide series of facts showing animal and human life under a quite different aspect. It was necessary to indicate the overwhelming importance which sociable habits play in Nature and in the progressive evolution of both the animal species and human beings : to prove that they secure to animals a better protection from r their enemies, very often facilities for getting food (winter provisions, migrations, etc.), longevity, and therefore a greater facility for the development of intellectual faculties ; and that they have given to men, in addition to the same advantages, the possibility of working out those institutions which have enabled mankind to survive In its hard struggle against Nature, and to progress, notwithstanding all the vicissitudes of 1 its history. It is a book on the law of Mutual Aid,
I viewed at as one of the chief factors of evolution — not I on all factors of evolution and their respective values ;
and this first book had to be written, before the latter V could become possible.
I should certainly be the last to underrate the part which the self-assertion of the individual has played in the evolution of mankind. However, this subject requires, I believe, a much deeper treatment than the one it has hitherto received. In the history of man¬ kind, individual self-assertion has often been, and con¬ tinually is, something quite different from, and far
INTRODUCTION
xvn
larger and deeper than, the petty, unintelligent narrow¬ mindedness, which, with a large class of writers, goes for “individualism” and “self-assertion.” Nor have history-making individuals been limited to those whom historians have represented as heroes. My intention, consequently, is, if circumstances permit it, to discuss separately the part taken by the self-assertion of the Individual in the progressive evolution of mankind. I can only make in this place the following general remark : — When the Mutual Aid institutions — the tribe, the village community, the guilds, the mediaeval city — began, in the course of history, to lose their primitive character, to be invaded by parasitic growths, and thus to become hindrances to progress, the revolt of individuals against these institutions took always two different aspects. Part of those who rose up strove to purify the old institutions, or to work out a higher form of commonwealth, based upon the same Mutual Aid principles ; they tried, for instance, to introduce the principle of “ compensation,” instead of the lex talionis, and later on, the pardon of offences, or a still higher ideal of equality before the human conscience, iti lieu of “ compensation,” according to class-value. But at the very same time, another portion of the same individual rebels endeavoured to break down the protective institutions of mutual sup¬ port, with no other intention but to increase their own wealth and their own powers. In this three-cornered contest, between the two classes of revolted individuals and the supporters of what existed, lies the real tragedy of history. But to delineate that contest, and honestly to study the part played in the evolution of mankind by each one of these three forces, would require at least as many years as it took me to write this book.
xviii
INTRODUCTION
Of works dealing with nearly the same subject which have been published since the publication of my articles on Mutual Aid among Animals, I must mention The Lowell Lectures on the Ascent of Man, by Henry Drummond (London, 1894), and The Origin and Growth of tJu Moral Instinct, by A. Sutherland (London, 1898). Both are constructed chiefly on the lines taken in Buchner’s Love, and in the second work the parental and familial feeling as the sole influence at work in the development of the moral feelings has been dealt with at some length. A third work dealing with man and written on similar lines is The Principles of Sociology, by Prof. F. A. Giddings, the first edition of which was published in 1896 at New York and London, and the leading ideas of which were sketched by the author in a pamphlet in 1894. I must leave, however, to literary critics the task of discussing the points of contact, resemblance, or divergence between these works and mine.
The different chapters of this book were published first in the Nineteenth Century (“ Mutual Aid among Animals,” in September and November 1890; “ Mutual Aid among Savages,” in April 1891 ; “ Mutual Aid among the Barbarians,” in January 1892 ; “ Mutual Aid in the Mediaeval City,” in August and September 1894; and “Mutual Aid amongst Modern Men,” in January and June 1896). In bringing them out in a book form my first intention was to embody in an Appendix the mass of materials, as well as the discussion of several secondary points, which had to be omitted in the review articles. It appeared, however, that the Appendix would double the size of the book, and I was compelled to abandon, or, at least, to postpone its publication. The present
INTRODUCTION
XIX
Appendix includes the discussion of only a few points which have been the matter of scientific controversy during the last few years ; and into the text I have introduced only such matter as could be introduced without altering the structure of the work.
I am glad of this opportunity for expressing to the editor of the Nineteenth Century^ Mr. James Knowles, my very best thanks, both for the kind hospitality which he offered to these papers in his review, as soon as he knew their general idea, and the permission he kindly gave me to reprint them.
Bromley^ Kent, igo2.
CHAPTER I
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
Struggle for existence. — Mutual Aid — a law of Nature and chief factor of progressive evolution. — Invertebrates. — Ants and Bees. — Birds : Hunting and fishing associations. — Sociability. — Mutual pro¬ tection among small birds. — Cranes; parrots.
The conception of struggle for existence as a factor of evolution, introduced into science by Darwin and Wallace, has permitted us to embrace an immensely- wide range of phenomena in one single generalization, which soon became the very basis of our philosophical, biological, and sociological speculations. An immense variety of facts : — adaptations of function and structure of organic beings to their surroundings ; physiological and anatomical evolution ; intellectual progress, and moral development itself, which we formerly used to explain by so many different causes, were embodied by Darwin in one general conception. We understood them as continued endeavours — as a struggle against adverse circumstances — for such a development of individuals, races, species and societies, as would result in the greatest possible fulness, variety, and intensity of life. It may be that at the outset Darwin himself was not fully aware of the generality of the factor
2
MUTUAL AID
which he first invoked for explaining one series only of facts relative to the accumulation of individual variations in incipient species. But he foresaw that the term which he was introducing into science woul^ lose its philosophical and its only true meaning if it were to be used in its narrow sense only — that of a’ struggle between separate individuals for the sheer means of existence. And at the very beginning of his memorable work he insisted upon the term being taken in its “ large and metaphorical sense including dependence of one being on another, and including (which is more important) not only the life of the individual, but success in leaving progeny.” ^
While he himself was chiefly using the term in its narrow sense for his own special purpose, he warned his followers against committing the error (which he seems once to have committed himself) of overrating its narrow meaning. I n The Descent of Matt he gave some powerful pages to illustrate its proper, wide sense. He pointed out how, in numberless animal societies, the struggle between separate individuals for the means of existence disappears, how struggle is replaced by co-operation, and how that substitution results in the development of intellectual and moral faculties which secure to the species the best conditions for survival. He intimated that in such cases the fittest are not the physically strongest, nor the cunningest, but those who learn to combine so as mutually to support each other, strong and weak alike, for the welfare of the community. “Those communities,” he wrote, “which included the greatest number of the most sympathetic members would flourish best, and rear the greatest number of offspring” (2nd edit., p. 163). The term, which ^ Origin of Species, chap. iii.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
3
originated from the narrow Malthusian conception of competition between each and all, thus lost its narrow¬ ness in the mind of one who knew Nature.
Unhappily, these remarks, which might have become the basis of most fruitful researches, were overshadowed by the masses of facts gathered for the purpose of illustrating the consequences of a real competition for life. Besides, Darwin never attempted to submit to a closer investigation the relative importance of the two aspects under which the struggle for existence appears in the animal world, and he never wrote the work he proposed to write upon the natural checks to over-multiplication, although that work would have been the crucial test for appreciating the real purport of individual struggle. Nay, on the very pages just mentioned, amidst data disproving the narrow Malthus¬ ian conception of struggle, the old Malthusian leaven reappeared — namely, in Darwin’s remarks as to the alleged inconveniences of maintaining the “ weak in mind and body ” in our civilized societies (ch. v.). As if thousands of weak-bodied and infirm poets, scientists, inventors, and reformers, together with other thousands of so-called “fools” and “weak-minded enthusiasts,” were not the most precious weapons used by humanity in its struggle for existence by intellectual and moral arms, which Darwin himself emphasized in those same chapters of Descent of Man.
It happened with Darwin’s theory as it always happens with theories having any bearing upon human relations. Instead of widening it according to his own hints, his followers narrowed it still more. And while Herbert Spencer, starting on independent but closely- allied lines, attempted to widen the inquiry into that great question, “ Who are the fittest ? ” especially in
4
MUTUAL AID
the appendix to the third edition of the Data of Ethics, the numberless followers of Darwin reduced the notion of struggle for existence to its narrowest limits. They came to conceive the animal world as a world of per¬ petual struggle among half-starved individuals, thirst¬ ing for one another’s blood. They made modern literature resound with the war-cry of woe to the van¬ quished, as if it were the last word of modern biology. They raised the “ pitiless ” struggle for personal advantages to the height of a biological principle which man must submit to as well, under the menace of otherwise succumbing in a world based upon mutual extermination. Leaving aside the economists who know of natural science but a few words borrowed from second-hand vulgarizers, we must recognize that even the most authorized exponents of Darwin’s views did their best to maintain those false ideas. In fact, if we take Huxley, who certainly is considered as one of the ablest exponents of the theory of evolution, were we not taught by him, in a paper on the ‘ Struggle for Existence and its Bearing upon Man,’ that,
“ from the point of view of the moralist, the animal world is on about the same level as a gladiators’ show. The creatures are fairly well treated, and set to fight ; whereby the strongest, the swiftest, and the cunningest live to fight another day. The spectator has no need to turn his thumb down, as no quarter is given.”
Or, further down in the same article, did he not tell us that, as among animals, so among primitive men,
“the weakest and stupidest went to the wall, while the toughest and shrewdest, those who were best fitted to cope with their circumstances, but not the best in another way, survived. Life was a continuous free fight, and beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence.” ^
^ Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
5
In how far this view of nature is supported by fact, will be seen from the evidence which will be here sub¬ mitted to the reader as regards the animal world, and as regards primitive man. But it may be remarked at once that Huxley’s view of nature had as little claim to be taken as a scientific deduction as the opposite view of Rousseau, who saw in nature but love, peace, and harmony destroyed by the accession of man. In fact, the first walk in the forest, the first observation upon any animal society, or even the perusal of any serious work dealing with animal life (D’Orbigny’s, Audubon’s, Le Vaillant’s, no matter which), cannot but set the naturalist thinking about the part taken by social life in the life of animals, and prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but a field of slaughter, just as this would prevent him from seeing in Nature nothing but harmony and peace. Rousseau had committed the error of excluding the beak-and-claw fight from his thoughts ; and Huxley committed the opposite error ; but neither Rousseau's optimism nor Huxley’s pessimism can be accepted as an impartial interpretation of nature.
As soon as we study animals — not in laboratories and museums only, but in the forest and the prairie, in the steppe and the mountains — we at once perceive that though there is an immense amount of warfare and extermination going on amidst various species, and especially amidst various classes of animals, there is, at the same time, as much, or perhaps even more, of mutual support, mutual aid, and mutual defence amidst animals belonging to the same species or, at least, to the same society. Sociability is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle. Of course it would be extremely difficult to estimate, however roughly.
6
MUTUAL AID
the relative numerical Importance of both these series of facts. But If we resort to an Indirect test, and ask Nature : “ Who are the fittest : those who are con¬ tinually at war with each other, or those who support one another ? ” we at once see that those animals which acquire habits of mutual aid are undoubtedly the fittest. They have more chances to survive, and they attain, In their respective classes, the highest development of Intelligence and bodily organization. If the numberless facts which can be brought forward to support this view are taken into account, we may safely say that mutual aid is as much a law of animal life as mutual struggle, but that, as a factor of evolution, it most probably has a far greater importance, inas¬ much as it favours the development of such habits and characters as insure the maintenance and further development of the species, together with the greatest amount of welfare and enjoyment of life for the individual, with the least waste of energy.
Of the scientific followers of Darwin, the first, as far as I know, who understood the full purport of Mutual Aid as a law of Nature and the chief factor of evolution, was a well-known Russian zoologist, the late Dean of the St. Petersburg University, Professor Kessler. He developed his ideas in an address which he delivered in January 1880, a few months before his death, at a Congress of Russian naturalists ; but, like so many good things published in the Russian tongue only, that remarkable address remains almost entirely un¬ known.^
^ Leaving aside the pre-Darwinian writers, like Toussenel, F^e, and many others, several works containing many striking instances of mutual aid — chiefly, however, illustrating animal intelligence — were issued previously to that date. I may mention those of Douzeau, Les facultes mentales des animaux, 2 vols., Brussels, 1872 ;
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
7
“As a zoologist of old standing,” he felt bound to protest against the abuse of a term — the struggle for existence — borrowed from zoology, or, at least, against overrating its importance. Zoology, he said, and those sciences which deal with man, continually insist upon what they call the pitiless law of struggle for existence. But they forget the existence of another law which may be described as the law of mutual aid, which law, at least for the animals, is far more essential than the former. He pointed out how the need of leaving progeny necessarily brings animals together, and, “ the more the individuals keep together, the more they mutually support each other, and the more are the chances of the species for surviving, as well as for making further progress in its intellectual develop¬ ment.” “All classes of animals,” he continued, “and especially the higher ones, practise mutual aid,” and he illustrated his idea by examples borrowed from the life of the burying beetles and the social life of birds and some mammalia. The examples were few, as
L. Buchner’s Aus dem Geistesleben der Thieve^ 2nd ed. in 1877; and Maximilian Party’s Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere, Leipzig, 1876. Espinas published his most remarkable work, Les Socieies animales, in 1877, and in that work he pointed out the importance of animal societies, and their bearing upon the preservation of species, and entered upon a most valuable discussion of the origin of societies. In fact, Espinas’s book contains all that has been written since upon mutual aid, and many good things besides. If I nevertheless make a special mention of Kessler’s address, it is because he raised mutual aid to the height of a law much more important in evolution than the law of mutual struggle. The same ideas were developed next year (in April 1881) by J. Lanessan in a lecture published in 1882 under this title : La lutte pour V existence et F association pour la lutte. G. Romanes’s capital work. Animal Intelligence, was issued in 1882, and followed next year by the Mental Evolution in Animals. About the same time (1883), Buchner published another work, Liebe und Liebes-Leben in der Thierwelt, a second edition of which was issued in 1885. The idea, as seen, was in the air.
8
MUTUAL AID
might have been expected in a short opening address, but the chief points were clearly stated ; and, after mentioning that in the evolution of mankind mutual aid played a still more prominent part. Professor Kessler concluded as follows : —
“ I obviously do not deny the struggle for existence, but I maintain that the progressive development of the animal kingdom, and especially of mankind, is favoured much more by mutual support than by mutual struggle. . . . All organic beings have two essential needs : that of nutrition, and that of propagating the species. The former brings them to a struggle and to mutual extermination, while the needs of maintaining the species bring them to approach one another and to support one another. But I am inclined to think that in the evolution of the organic world — in the progressive modification of organic beings — mutual support among indi¬ viduals plays a much more important part than their mutual struggle.” ^
The correctness of the above views struck most of the Russian zoologists present, and Syevertsoff, whose work is well known to ornithologists and geographers, supported them and illustrated them by a few more examples. He mentioned some of the species of falcons which have “ an almost ideal organization for robbery,” and nevertheless are in decay, while other species of falcons, which practise mutual help, do thrive. “ Take, on the other side, a sociable bird, the duck,” he said ; “ it is poorly organized on the whole, but it practises mutual support, and it almost invades the earth, as may be judged from its numberless varieties and species.”
The readiness of the Russian zoologists to accept Kessler’s views seems quite natural, because nearly all of them have had opportunities of studying the
1 Memoirs ( Ti udy) of the St. Petersburg Society of Naturalists, vol. xi. 1880.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
9
animal world in the wide uninhabited regions of Northern Asia and East Russia; and it is impossible to study like regions without being brought to the same ideas, I recollect myself the impression pro¬ duced upon me by the animal world of Siberia when I explored the Vitim regions in the company of so accomplished a zoologist as my friend Polyakoff was. We both were under the fresh impression of the Origin of Species, but we vainly looked for the keen competition between animals of the same species which the reading of Darwin’s work had prepared us to expect, even after taking into account the remarks of the third chapter (p. 54), We saw plenty of adapt¬ ations for struggling, very often in common, against the adverse circumstances of climate, or against various enemies, and Polyakoff wrote many a good page upon the mutual dependency of carnivores, ruminants, and rodents in their geographical distribution ; we wit¬ nessed numbers of facts of mutual support, especially during the migrations of birds and ruminants; but even in the Amur and Usuri regions, where animal life swarms in abundance, facts of real competition and struggle between higher animals of the same species came very seldom under my notice, though I eagerly searched for them. The same impression appears in the works of most Russian zoologists, and it probably explains why Kessler’s ideas were so welcomed by the Russian Darwinists, whilst like ideas are not in vogue amidst the followers of Darwin in Western Europe.
The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying the struggle for existence under both its aspects — direct and metaphorical — is the abundance
lO
MUTUAL AID
of facts of mutual aid, not only for rearing progeny, as recognized by most evolutionists, but also for the safety of the individual, and for providing it with the necessary food. With many large divisions of the animal kingdom mutual aid is the rule. Mutual aid is met with even amidst the lowest animals, and we must be prepared to learn some day, from the students of microscopical pond-life, facts of unconscious mutual support, even from the life of micro-organisms. Of course, our knowledge of the life of the invertebrates, save the termites, the ants, and the bees, is extremely limited ; and yet, even as regards the lower animals, we may glean a few facts of well-ascertained co¬ operation. The numberless associations of locusts, vanessae, cicindelae, cicadae, and so on, are practically quite unexplored ; but the very fact of their existence indicates that they must be composed on about the same principles as the temporary associations of ants or bees for purposes of migration.^ As to the beetles, we have quite well-observed facts of mutual help amidst the burying beetles {Necrophorus). They must have some decaying organic matter to lay their eggs in, and thus to provide their larvae with food ; but that matter must not decay very rapidly. So they are wont to bury in the ground the corpses of all kinds of small animals which they occasionally find in their rambles. As a rule, they live an isolated life, but when one of them has discovered the corpse of a mouse or of a bird, which it hardly could manage to bury itself, it calls four, six, or ten other beetles to perform the operation with united efforts ; if necessary, they transport the corpse to a suitable soft ground ; and they bury it in a very considerate way, without 1 See Appendix I.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
1 1
quarrelling as to which of them will enjoy the privilege of laying its eggs in the buried corpse. And when Gleditsch attached a dead bird to a cross made out of two sticks, or suspended a toad to a stick planted in the soil, the little beetles would in the same friendly way combine their intelligences to overcome the artifice of Man. The same combination of efforts has been noticed among the dung-beetles.
Even among animals standing at a somewhat lower stage of organization we may find like examples. Some land-crabs of the West Indies and North America combine in large swarms in order to travel to the sea and to deposit therein their spawn ; and each such migration implies concert, co-operation, and mutual support. As to the big Molucca crab (^Limulus),
I was struck (in 1882, at the Brighton Aquarium) with the extent of mutual assistance which these clumsy animals are capable of bestowing upon a comrade in case of need. One of them had fallen upon its back in a corner of the tank, and its heavy saucepan-like carapace prevented it from returning to its natural position, the more so as there was in the corner an iron bar which rendered the task still more difficult. Its comrades came to the rescue, and for one hour’s time I watched how they endeavoured to help their fellow-prisoner. They came two at once, pushed their friend from beneath, and after strenuous efforts suc¬ ceeded in lifting it upright ; but then the iron bar would prevent them from achieving the work of rescue, and the crab would again heavily fall upon its back. After many attempts, one of the helpers would go in the depth of the tank and bring two other crabs, which would begin with fresh forces the same pushing and lifting of their helpless comrade. We stayed in the
12
MUTUAL AID
Aquarium for more than two hours, and, when leaving, we again came to cast a glance upon the tank : the work of rescue still continued ! Since I saw that, I cannot refuse credit to the observation quoted by Dr. Erasmus Darwin — namely, that “the common crab during the moulting season stations as sentinel an unmoulted or hard-shelled individual to prevent marine enemies from injuring moulted individuals in their unprotected state.” ^
Facts illustrating mutual aid amidst the termites, the ants, and the bees are so well known to the general reader, especially through the works of Romanes, L. Buchner, and Sir John Lubbock, that I may limit my remarks to a very few hints. ^ If we take an ants’ nest, we not only see that every description of work — rearing of progeny, foraging, building, rearing of aphides, and so on — is performed according to the principles of voluntary mutual aid ; we must also recognize, with Forel, that the chief, the fundamental feature of the life of many species of ants is the fact and the obligation for every ant of sharing its food, already swallowed and partly digested, with every member of the community which may apply for it. Two ants belonging to two different species or to two hostile nests, when they occasionally meet together, will avoid each other. But two ants belonging to the same nest or to the same colony of nests will approach
^ George J. Romanes’s Animal Intelligence, ist ed. p. 233.
* Pierre Huber’s Recherches sur les fourmis, Gdnbve, 1810; re¬ printed as Les fourmis indigenes, G^nbve, 1861 ; Forel’s Recherches sur les fourmis de la Suisse, Zurich, 1874, and J. T. Moggridge’s Har¬ vesting Ants and Trapdoor Spiders, London, 1873 and 1874, ought to be in the hands of every boy and girl. See also : Blanchard’s Meta¬ morphoses des Insectes, Paris, 1868; J. H. Fabre’s Souvenirs entomolo- giques, Paris, 1886; Ebrard’s Etudes des maeurs des fourmis, G^nbve, 1864 ; Sir John Lubbock’s Ants, Bees, and Wasps, and so on,
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
13
each other, exchange a few movements with the antennae, and “ if one of them is hungry or thirsty, and especially if the other has its crop full ... it immediately asks for food.” The individual thus requested never refuses ; it sets apart its mandibles, takes a proper position, and regurgitates a drop of transparent fluid which is licked up by the hungry ant. Regurgitating food for other ants is so prominent a feature in the life of ants (at liberty), and it so constantly recurs both for feeding hungry comrades and for feeding larvse, that Forel considers the di¬ gestive tube of the ants as consisting of two different parts, one of which, the posterior, is for the special use of the individual, and the other, the anterior part, is chiefly for the use of the community. If an ant which has its crop full has been selfish enough to refuse feeding a comrade, it will be treated as an enemy, or even worse. If the refusal has been made while its kinsfolk were fighting with some other species, they will fall back upon the greedy individual with greater vehemence than even upon the enemies themselves. And if an ant has not refused to feed another ant belonging to an enemy species, it will be treated by the kinsfolk of the latter as a friend. All this is con¬ firmed by most accurate observation and decisive experiments.^
In that immense division of the animal kingdom which embodies more than one thousand species, and is so numerous that the Brazilians pretend that Brazil belongs to the ants, not to men, competition amidst the members of the same nest, or the colony of nests,
^ Ford’s Recherches, pp. 244, 275, 278. Huber’s description of the process is admirable. It also contains a hint as to the possible origin of the instinct (popular edition, pp. 158, 160). See Appendix II.
14
MUTUAL AID
does not exist. However terrible the wars between different species, and whatever the atrocities committed at war-time, mutual aid within the community, self- devotion grown into a habit, and very often self- sacrifice for the common welfare, are the rule. The ants and termites have renounced the “ Hobbesian war,” and they are the better for it. Their wonderful nests, their buildings, superior in relative size to those of man ; their paved roads and overground vaulted galleries ; their spacious halls and granaries ; their corn-fields, harvesting and “malting” of grain ; ^ their rational methods of nursing their eggs and larvae, and of building special nests for rearing the aphides whom Linnaeus so picturesquely described as “ the cows of the ants ” ; and, finally, their courage, pluck, and superior intelligence — all these are the natural outcome of the mutual aid which they practise at every stage of their busy and laborious lives. That mode of life also necessarily resulted in the development of another essential feature of the life of ants : the immense development of individual initiative which, in its turn, evidently led to the development of that high and varied intelligence which cannot but strike the human observer.^
If we knew no other facts from animal life than what
^ The agriculture of the ants is so wonderful that for a long time it has been doubted. The fact is now so well proved by Mr. Moggridge, Dr. Lincecum, Mr. MacCook, Col. Sykes, and Dr. Jerdon, that no doubt is possible. See an excellent summary of evidence in Mr. Romanes’s work. See also Die Pilzgaerten einiger Sud-Amerikanischen Ameisen, by Alf. Moeller, in Schimper’s Botan. Mitth. aus den Tropen^ vi. 1893.
2 This second principle was not recognized at once. Former observers often spoke of kings, queens, managers, and so on ; but since Huber and Forel have published their minute observations, no doubt is possible as to the free scope left for every individual’s initiative in whatever the ants do, including their wars.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
15
we know about the ants and the termites, we already might safely conclude that mutual aid (which leads to mutual confidence, the first condition for courage) and individual initiative (the first condition for intellectual progress) are two factors infinitely more important than mutual struggle in the evolution of the animal kingdom. In fact, the ant thrives without having any of the “protective” features which cannot be dispensed with by animals living an isolated life. Its colour renders it conspicuous to its enemies, and the lofty nests of many species are conspicuous in the meadows and forests. It is not protected by a hard carapace, and its stinging apparatus, however dangerous when hundreds of stings are plunged into the flesh of an animal, is not of a great value for individual defence ; while the eggs and larvae of the ants are a dainty for a great number of the inhabitants of the forests. And yet the ants, in their thousands, are not much destroyed by the birds, not even by the ant-eaters, and they are dreaded by most stronger insects. When Forel emptied a bagful of ants in a meadow, he saw that “ the crickets ran away, abandoning their holes to be sacked by the ants ; the grasshoppers and the crickets fled in all directions ; the spiders and the beetles abandoned their prey in order not to become prey themselves;” even the nests of the wasps were taken by the ants, after a battle during which many ants perished for the safety of the commonwealth. Even the swiftest insects cannot escape, and Forel often saw butterflies, gnats, flies, and so on, surprised and killed by the ants. Their force is in mutual support and mutual confidence. And if the ant — apart from the still higher developed termites — stands at the very top of the whole class of insects for its intellectual capacities ; if its courage is
i6
MUTUAL AID
only equalled by the most courageous vertebrates ; and if its brain — to use Darwin’s words — “ is one of the most marvellous atoms of matter in the world, perhaps more so than the brain of man,” is it not due to the fact that mutual aid has entirely taken the place of mutual struggle in the communities of ants ?
The same is true as regards the bees. These small insects, which so easily might become the prey of so many birds, and whose honey has so many admirers in all classes of animals from the beetle to the bear, also have none of the protective features derived from mimicry or otherwise, without which an isolatedly- living insect hardly could escape wholesale destruction ; and yet, owing to the mutual aid they practise, they obtain the wide extension which we know and the intelligence we admire. By working in common they multiply their individual forces ; by resorting to a temporary division of labour combined with the capacity of each bee to perform every kind of work when required, they attain such a degree of well-being and safety as no isolated animal can ever expect to achieve however strong or well-armed it may be. In their combinations they are often more successful than man, when he neglects to take advantage of a well-planned mutual assistance. Thus, when a new swarm of bees is going to leave the hive in search of a new abode, a number of bees will make a preliminary exploration of the neighbourhood, and if they discover a convenient dwelling-place — say, an old basket, or anything of the kind — they will take possession of it, clean it, and guard it, sometimes for a whole week, till the swarm comes to settle therein. But how many human settlers will perish in new countries simply for not having understood the necessity of combining their
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
17
efforts ! By combining their individual intelligences they succeed in coping with adverse circumstances, even quite unforeseen and unusual, like those bees of the Paris Exhibition which fastened with their resinous propolis the shutter to a glass-plate fitted in the wall of their hive. Besides, they display none of the sanguinary proclivities and love of useless fighting with which many writers so readily endow animals. The sentries which guard the entrance to the hive pitilessly put to death the robbing bees which attempt entering the hive ; but those stranger bees which come to the hive by mistake are left unmolested, especially if they come laden with pollen, or are young individuals which can easily go astray. There is no more warfare than is strictly required.
The sociability of the bees is the more instructive as predatory instincts and laziness continue to exist among the bees as well, and reappear each time that their growth is favoured by some circumstances. It is well known that there always are a number of bees which prefer a life of robbery to the laborious life of a worker ; and that both periods of scarcity and periods of an unusually rich supply of food lead to an increase of the robbing class. When our crops are in and there remains but little to gather in our meadows and fields, robbing bees become of more frequent occur¬ rence ; while, on the other side, about the sugar planta¬ tions of the West Indies and the sugar refineries of Europe, robbery, laziness, and very often drunkenness become quite usual with the bees. We thus see that anti-social instincts continue to exist amidst the bees as well ; but natural selection continually must eliminate them, because in the long run the practice of solidarity proves much more advantageous to the species than
c
i8
MUTUAL AID
the development of individuals endowed with predatory- inclinations. The cunningest and the shrewdest are eliminated in favour of those who understand the advantages of sociable life and mutual support.
Certainly, neither the ants, nor the bees, nor even the termites, have risen to the conception of a higher solidarity embodying the whole of the species. In that respect they evidently have not attained a degree of development which we do not find even among our political, scientific, and religious leaders. Their social instincts hardly extend beyond the limits of the hive or the nest. However, colonies of no less than two hundred nests, belonging to two different species {^For¬ mica exsecta and F. pressilabris) have been described by Forel on Mount Tendre and Mount Saleve ; and Forel maintains that each member of these colonies recognizes every other member of the colony, and that they all take part in common defence ; while in Penn¬ sylvania Mr. MacCook saw a whole nation of from 1, 600 to 1,700 nests of the mound-making ant, all living in perfect intelligence ; and Mr. Bates has described the hillocks of the termites covering large surfaces in the “campos” — some of the nests being the refuge of two or three different species, and most of them being connected by vaulted galleries or arcades.^ Some steps towards the amalgamation of larger divisions of the species for purposes of mutual pro¬ tection are thus met with even among the invertebrate animals.
Going now over to higher animals, we find far more instances of undoubtedly conscious mutual help for all possible purposes, though we must recognize at once
1 H. W. Bates, The Naturalist on the River Amazons, ii. 59 se^.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
19
that our knowledge even of the life of higher animals still remains very imperfect. A large number of facts have been accumulated by first-rate observers, but there are whole divisions of the animal kingdom of which we know almost nothing. Trustworthy infor¬ mation as regards fishes is extremely scarce, partly owing to the difficulties of observation, and partly because no proper attention has yet been paid to the subject. As to the mammalia, Kessler already re¬ marked how little we know about their manners of life. Many of them are nocturnal in their habits ; others conceal themselves underground ; and those ruminants whose social life and migrations offer the greatest interest do not let man approach their herds. It is chiefly upon birds that we have the widest range of information, and yet the social life of very many species remains but imperfectly known. Still, we need not complain about the lack of well-ascertained facts, as will be seen from the following.
I need not dwell upon the associations of male and female for rearing their offspring, for providing it with food during their first steps in life, or for hunting in common ; though it may be mentioned by the way that such associations are the rule even with the least sociable carnivores and rapacious birds ; and that they derive a special interest from being the field upon which tenderer feelings develop even amidst other¬ wise most cruel animals. It may also be added that the rarity of associations larger than that of the family among the carnivores and the birds of prey, though mostly being the result of their very modes of feeding, can also be explained to some extent as a consequence of the change produced in the animal world by the rapid increase of mankind. At any rate it is worthy
20
MUTUAL AID
of note that there are species living a quite isolated life in densely-inhabited regions, while the same species, or their nearest congeners, are gregarious in unin¬ habited countries. Wolves, foxes, and several birds of prey may be quoted as instances in point.
However, associations which do not extend beyond the family bonds are of relatively small importance in our case, the more so as we know numbers of associ¬ ations for more general purposes, such as hunting, mutual protection, and even simple enjoyment of life. Audubon already mentioned that eagles occasionally associate for hunting, and his description of the two bald eagles, male and female, hunting on the Missis¬ sippi, is well known for its graphic powers. But one of the most conclusive observations of the kind belongs to Syevertsoff. Whilst studying the fauna of the Russian Steppes, he once saw an eagle belonging to an altogether gregarious species (the white-tailed eagle, Haliaetos albicilld) rising high in the air ; for half-an- hour it was describing its wide circles in silence when at once its piercing voice was heard. Its cry was soon answered by another eagle which approached it, and was followed by a third, a fourth, and so on, till nine or ten eagles came together and soon disappeared. In the afternoon, Syevertsoff went to the place whereto he saw the eagles flying ; concealed by one of the undulations of the Steppe, he approached them, and discovered that they had gathered around the corpse of a horse. The old ones, which, as a rule, begin the meal first — such are their rules of propriety — already were sitting upon the haystacks of the neighbourhood and kept watch, while the younger ones were continu¬ ing the meal, surrounded by bands of crows. From this and like observations, Syevertsoff concluded that
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
21
the white-tailed eagles combine for hunting ; when they all have risen to a great height they are enabled, if they are ten, to survey an area of at least twenty- five miles square ; and as soon as any one has dis¬ covered something, he warns the othersA Of course, it might be argued that a simple instinctive cry of the first eagle, or even its movements, would have had the same effect of bringing several eagles to the prey; but in this case there is strong evidence in favour of mutual warning, because the ten eagles came together before descending towards the prey, and Syevertsoff had later on several opportunities of ascertaining that the white¬ tailed eagles always assemble for devouring a corpse, and that some of them (the younger ones first) always keep watch while the others are eating. In fact, the white-tailed eagle — one of the bravest and best hunters — is a gregarious bird altogether, and Brehm says that when kept in captivity it very soon contracts an attach¬ ment to its keepers.
Sociability is a common feature with very many other birds of prey. The Brazilian kite, one of the most “ impudent ” robbers, is nevertheless a most sociable bird. Its hunting associations have been described by Darwin and other naturalists, and it is a fact that when it has seized upon a prey which is too big, it calls together five or six friends to carry it away. After a busy day, when these kites retire for their night-rest to a tree or to the bushes, they always gather in bands, sometimes coming together from distances of ten or more miles, and they often are joined by several other vultures, especially the perc- nopters, “ their true friends,” D’Orbigny says. In
^ N. Syevertsoff, Periodical Phetiomena in the Life of Mammalia^ Birds, and Reptiles of Voronlje, Moscow, 1855 (in Russian),
22
MUTUAL AID
another continent, in the Transcaspian deserts, they have, according to Zarudnyi, the same habit of nesting together. The sociable vulture, one of the strongest vultures, has received its very name from its love of society. They live in numerous bands, and decidedly enjoy society ; numbers of them join in their high flights for sport. “ They live in very good friendship,” Le Vaillant says, “and in the same cave I sometimes found as many as three nests close together.” ' The Urubu vultures of Brazil are as, or perhaps even more, sociable than rooks,^ The little Egyptian vultures live in close friendship. They play in bands in the air, they come together to spend the night, and in the morning they all go together to search for their food, and never does the slightest quarrel arise among them ; such is the testimony of Brehm, who had plenty of opportunities of observing their life. The red-throated falcon is also met with in numerous bands in the forests of Brazil, and the kestrel {Tinnunculus cenchris), when it has left Europe, and has reached in the winter the prairies and forests of Asia, gathers in numerous societies. In the Steppes of South Russia it is (or rather was) so sociable that Nordmann saw them in numerous bands, with other falcons {Falco tinnunculus, F. cesulon, and F. subbuteo), coming together every fine afternoon about four o’clock, and enjoying their sports till late in the night. They set off flying, all at once, in a quite straight line, towards some determined point, and, having reached it, immediately returned over the same line, to repeat the same flight.^
1 A. Brehm, Life of Animals, iii. 477 ; all quotations after the French edition. ^ Bates, p. 151.
® Catalogue raisonnt des oiseaux de la faune f antique, in D^midoff s
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
23
To take flights in flocks for the mere pleasure of the flight, is quite common among all sorts of birds. “In the Humber district especially,” Ch. Dixon writes, “ vast flights of dunlins often appear upon the mud-flats towards the end of August, and remain for the winter. . . . The movements of these birds are most interesting, as a vast flock wheels and spreads out or closes up with as much precision as drilled troops. Scattered among them are many odd stints and sanderlings and ringed-plovers.” ^
It would be quite impossible to enumerate here the various hunting associations of birds ; but the fishing associations of the pelicans are certainly worthy of notice for the remarkable order and intelligence dis¬ played by these clumsy birds. They always go fishing in numerous bands, and after having chosen an appropriate bay, they form a wide half-circle in face of the shore, and narrow it by paddling towards the shore, catching all fish that happen to be enclosed in the circle. On narrow rivers and canals they even divide into two parties, each of which draws up on a half-circle, and both paddle to meet each other, just as if two parties of men dragging two long nets should advance to capture all fish taken between the nets when both parties come to meet. As the night comes they fly to their resting-places — always the same for each flock — and no one has ever seen them fighting for the possession of either the bay or the resting- place. In South America they gather in flocks of
Voyage ; abstracts in Brehm, iii. 360. During their migrations birds of prey often associate. One flock, which H. Seebohm saw crossing the Pyrenees, represented a curious assemblage of “ eight kites, one crane, and a peregrine falcon” {The Birds of Siberia^ 1901, p. 417).
^ Birds in the Northern Shires, p. 207.
24
MUTUAL AID
from forty to fifty thousand individuals, part of which enjoy sleep while the others keep watch, and others again go fishing.^ And finally, I should be doing an injustice to the much-calumniated house-sparrows if I did not mention how faithfully each of them shares any food it discovers with all members of the society to which it belongs. The fact was known to the Greeks, and it has been transmitted to posterity how a Greek orator once exclaimed (I quote from memory): — “ While I am speaking to you a sparrow has come to tell to other sparrows that a slave has dropped on the floor a sack of corn, and they all go there to feed upon the grain.” The more, one is pleased to find this observation of old confirmed in a recent little book by Mr. Gurney, who does not doubt that the house- sparrows always inform each other as to where there is some food to steal ; he says, “ When a stack has been thrashed ever so far from the yard, the sparrows in the yard have always had their crops full of the grain.” 2 True, the sparrows are extremely particular in keeping their domains free from the invasions of strangers ; thus the sparrows of the Jardin du Luxem¬ bourg bitterly fight all other sparrows which may attempt to enjoy their turn of the garden and its visitors ; but within their own communities they fully practise mutual support, though occasionally there will be of course some quarrelling even amongst the best friends.
Hunting and feeding in common is so much the habit in the feathered world that more quotations hardly would be needful : it must be considered as an
^ Max. Perty, Ueber das Seelenleben der Thiere (Leipzig, 1876), pp. 87, 103.
^ G. H. Gurney, The House-Sparrow (London, 1885), p. 5.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
25
established fact. As to the force derived from such associations, it is self-evident. The strongest birds of prey are powerless in face of the associations of our smallest bird pets. Even eagles — even the powerful and terrible booted eagle, and the martial eagle, which is strong enough to carry away a hare or a young antelope in its claws — are compelled to abandon their prey to bands of those beggars the kites, which give the eagle a regular chase as soon as they see it in possession of a good prey. The kites will also give chase to the swift fishing-hawk, and rob it of the fish it has captured ; but no one ever saw the kites fighting together for the possession of the prey so stolen. On the Kerguelen Island, Dr. Coues saw the Buphagus — the sea-hen of the sealers — pursue gulls to make them disgorge their food, while, on the other side, the gulls and the terns combined to drive away the sea-hen as soon as it came near to their abodes, especially at nesting-time.^ The little, but extremely swift lapwings {Vanellus cristatus) boldly attack the birds of prey. “To see them attacking a buzzard, a kite, a crow, or an eagle, is one of the most amusing spectacles. One feels that they are sure of victory, and one sees the anger of the bird of prey. In such circumstances they perfectly support one another, and their courage grows with their numbers.^ The lap¬ wing has well merited the name of a “ good mother ” which the Greeks gave to it, for it never fails to protect other aquatic birds from the attacks of their enemies. But even the little white wagtails {Motacilla alba), whom we well know in our gardens and whose
1 Dr. Elliot Coues, Birds of the Kerguelen Island, in Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. xiii. No. 2, p. ii.
* Brehm, iv. 567.
26
MUTUAL AID
whole length hardly attains eight inches, compel the sparrow-hawk to abandon its hunt. “ I often admired their courage and agility,” the old Brehm wrote, “ and I am persuaded that the falcon alone is capable of capturing any of them. . . . When a band of wagtails has compelled a bird of prey to retreat, they make the air resound with their triumphant cries, and after that they separate.” They thus come together for the special purpose of giving chase to their enemy, just as we see it when the whole bird-population of a forest has been raised by the news that a nocturnal bird has made its appearance during the day, and all together — birds of prey and small inoffensive singers — set to chase the stranger and make it return to its concealment.
What an immense difference between the force of a kite, a buzzard or a hawk, and such small birds as the meadow-wagtail ; and yet these little birds, by their common action and courage, prove superior to the powerfully-winged and armed robbers! In Europe, the wagtails not only chase the birds of prey which might be dangerous to them, but they chase also the fishing-hawk “ rather for fun than for doing it any harm;” while in India, according to Dr. Jerdon’s testimony, the jackdaws chase the gowinda-kite “ for simple matter of amusement.” Prince Wied saw the Brazilian eagle urzibitinga surrounded by numberless flocks of toucans and cassiques (a bird nearly akin to our rook), which mocked it. “The eagle,” he adds, “usually supports these insults very quietly, but from time to time it will catch one of these mockers.” In all such cases the little birds, though very much inferior in force to the bird of prey, prove superior to it by their common action.^
^ As to the house-sparrows, a New Zealand observer, Mr. T, W.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
27
However, the most striking effects of common life for the security of the individual, for its enjoyment of life, and for the development of its intellectual capacities, are seen in two great families of birds, the cranes and the parrots. The cranes are extremely sociable and live in most excellent relations, not only with their congeners, but also with most aquatic birds. Their prudence is really astonishing, so also their intelligence ; they grasp the new conditions in a moment, and act accordingly. Their sentries always keep watch around a flock which is feeding or resting, and the hunters know well how difficult it is to approach them. If man has succeeded in surprising them, they will never return to the same place without having sent out one single scout first, and a party of scouts afterwards ; and when the reconnoitring party returns and reports that there is no danger, a second group of scouts is sent out to verify the first report, before the whole band moves. With kindred species the cranes contract real friendship ; and in captivity there is no bird, save the also sociable and highly- intelligent parrot, which enters into such real friend¬ ship with man. “It sees in man, not a master, but a friend, and endeavours to manifest it,” Brehm concludes from a wide personal experience. The
Kirk, described as follows the attack of these “ impudent ” birds upon an “unfortunate” hawk : — “He heard one day a most unusual noise, as though all the small birds of the country had joined in one grand quarrel. Looking up, he saw a large hawk (C. gouldi — a carrion feeder) being buffeted by a flock of sparrows. They kept dashing at him in scores, and from all points at once. The unfortun¬ ate hawk was quite powerless. At last, approaching some scrub, the hawk dashed into it and remained there, while the sparrows congregated in groups round the bush, keeping up a constant chatter¬ ing and noise ” (Paper read before the New Zealand Institute ; Nature, Oct. 10, 1891).
28
MUTUAL AID
crane is in continual activity from early in the morn¬ ing till late in the night ; but it gives a few hours only in the morning to the task of searching its food, chiefly vegetable. All the remainder of the day is given to society life. “It picks up small pieces of wood or small stones, throws them in the air and tries to catch them ; it bends its neck, opens its wings, dances, jumps, runs about, and tries to manifest by all means its good disposition of mind, and always it remains graceful and beautiful.” ^ As it lives in society it has almost no enemies, and though Brehm occasionally saw one of them captured by a crocodile, he wrote that except the crocodile he knew no enemies of the crane. It eschews all of them by its proverbial prudence ; and it attains, as a rule, a very old age. No wonder that for the maintenance of the species the crane need not rear a numerous offspring ; it usually hatches but two eggs. As to its superior intelligence, it is sufficient to say that all observers are unanimous in recognizing that its intel¬ lectual capacities remind one very much of those of man.
The other extremely sociable bird, the parrot, stands, as known, at the very top of the whole feathered world for the development of its intelligence. Brehm has so admirably summed up the manners of life of the parrot, that I cannot do better than translate the following sentence : —
“ Except in the pairing season, they live in very numerous societies or bands. They choose a place in the forest to stay there, and thence they start every morning for their hunting expeditions. The members of each band remain faithfully attached to each other, and they share in common good or
1 Brehm, iv. 671 seq.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
29
bad luck. All together they repair in the morning to a field, or to a garden, or to a tree, to feed upon fruits. They post sentries to keep watch over the safety of the whole band, and are attentive to their warnings. In case of danger, all take to flight, mutually supporting each other, and all simul¬ taneously return to their resting-place. In a word, they always live closely united.”
They enjoy society of other birds as well. In India, the jays and crows come together from many miles round, to spend the night in company with the parrots in the bamboo thickets. When the parrots start hunting, they display the most wonderful intelli¬ gence, prudence, and capacity of coping with circum¬ stances. Take, for instance, a band of white cacadoos in Australia. Before starting to plunder a corn-field, they first send out a reconnoitring party which occu¬ pies the highest trees in the vicinity of the field, while other scouts perch upon the intermediate trees between the field and the forest and transmit the signals. If the report runs “ All right,” a score of cacadoos will separate from the bulk of the band, take a flight in the air, and then fly towards the trees nearest to the field. They also will scrutinize the neighbourhood for a long while, and only then will they give the signal for general advance, after which the whole band starts at once and plunders the field in no time. The Australian settlers have the greatest difficulties in beguiling the prudence of the parrots ; but if man, with all his art and weapons, has succeeded in killing some of them, the cacadoos become so prudent and watchful that they henceforward baffle all stratagems.^
There can be no doubt that it is the practice of life in society which enables the parrots to attain that very high level of almost human intelligence and almost
^ R. Lendenfeld, in Der zoologische Garten, 1889.
30
MUTUAL AID
human feelings which we know in them. Their high intelligence has induced the best naturalists to describe some species, namely the grey parrot, as the “bird- man.” As to their mutual attachment it is known that when a parrot has been killed by a hunter, the others fly over the corpse of their comrade with shrieks of complaints and “ themselves fall the victims of their friendship,” as Audubon said ; and when two captive parrots, though belonging to two different species, have contracted mutual friendship, the accidental death of one of the two friends has sometimes been followed by the death from grief and sorrow of the other friend. It is no less evident that in their societies they find infinitely more protection than they possibly might find in any ideal development of beak and claw. Very few birds of prey or mammals dare attack any but the smaller species of parrots, and Brehm is absolutely right in saying of the parrots, as he also says of the cranes and the sociable monkeys, that they hardly have any enemies besides men ; and he adds : “ It is most probable that the larger parrots succumb chiefly to old age rather than die from the claws of any enemies.” Only man, owing to his still more superior intelligence and weapons, also derived from association, succeeds in partially destroying them. Their very longevity would thus appear as a result of their social life. Could we not say the same as regards their wonderful memory, which also must be favoured in its development by society-life and by longevity accompanied by a full enjoyment of bodily and mental faculties till a very old age ?
As seen from the above, the war of each against all is not the law of nature. Mutual aid is as much a law of nature as mutual struggle, and that law will become
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
31
still more apparent when we have analyzed some other associations of birds and those of the mammalia. A few hints as to the importance of the law of mutual aid for the evolution of the animal kingdom have already been given in the preceding pages ; but their purport will still better appear when, after having given a few more illustrations, we shall be enabled presently to draw therefrom our conclusions.
CHAPTER II
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS {continued)
Migrations of birds. — Breeding associations. — Autumn societies. — Mammals : small number of unsociable species. — Hunting associa¬ tions of wolves, lions, etc. — Societies of rodents; of ruminants; of monkeys. — Mutual Aid in the struggle for life. — Darwin’s argu¬ ments to prove the struggle for life within the species. — Natural checks to over-multiplication. — Supposed extermination of interme¬ diate links. — Elimination of competition in Nature.
As soon as spring comes back to the temperate zone, myriads and myriads of birds which are scattered over the warmer regions of the South come together in numberless bands, and, full of vigour and joy, hasten northwards to rear their offspring. Each of our hedges, each grove, each ocean cliff, and each of the lakes and ponds with which Northern America, Northern Europe, and Northern Asia are dotted tell us at that time of the year the tale of what mutual aid means for the birds ; what force, energy, and protection it confers to every living being, however feeble and defenceless it otherwise might be. Take, for instance, one of the numberless lakes of the Russian and Siberian Steppes. Its shores are peopled with myriads of aquatic birds, belonging to at least a score of different species, all living in perfect peace — all protecting one another.
32
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
33
“ For several hundred yards from the shore the air is filled with gulls and terns, as with snow-flakes on a winter day. Thousands of plovers and sand-coursers run over the beach, searching their food, whistling, and simply enjoying life. Further on, on almost each wave, a duck is rocking, while higher up you notice the flocks of the Casarki ducks. Exuberant life swarms everywhere.”^
And here are the robbers — the strongest, the most cunning ones, those “ ideally organized for robbery.” And you hear their hungry, angry, dismal cries as for hours in succession they tvatch the opportunity of snatching from this mass of living beings one single unprotected individual. But as soon as they approach, their presence is signalled by dozens of voluntary sentries, and hundreds of gulls and terns set to chase the robber. Maddened by hunger, the robber soon abandons his usual precautions : he suddenly dashes into the living mass ; but, attacked from all sides, he again is compelled to retreat. From sheer despair he falls upon the wild ducks ; but the intelligent, social birds rapidly gather in a flock and fly away if the robber is an erne ; they plunge into the lake if it is a falcon ; or they raise a cloud of water-dust and bewilder the assailant if it is a kite.^ And while life continues to swarm on the lake, the robber flies away with cries of anger, and looks out for carrion, or for a young bird or a field-mouse not yet used to obey in time the warnings of its comrades. In the face of an exuberant life, the ideally-armed robber must be satisfied with the off-fall of that life.
Further north, in the Arctic archipelagoes,
“you may sail along the coast for many miles and see all the ledges, all the cliffs and corners of the mountain-sides, up to
^ Syevertsoff’s Periodical Phenomena^ p. 251.
* Seyfferlitz, quoted by Brehm, iv. 760.
D
34
MUTUAL AID
a height of from two to five hundred feet, literally covered with sea-birds, whose white breasts show against the dark rocks as if the rocks were closely sprinkled with chalk specks. The air, near and far, is, so to say, full with fowls.” ^
Each of such “ bird-mountains ” is a living illustration of mutual aid, as well as of the infinite variety of characters, individual and specific, resulting from social life. The oyster-catcher is renowned for its readiness to attack the birds of prey. The barge is known for its watchfulness, and it easily becomes the leader of more placid birds. The turnstone, when surrounded by comrades belonging to more energetic species, is a rather timorous bird ; but it undertakes to keep watch for the security of the commonwealth when surrounded by smaller birds. Here you have the dominative swans ; there, the extremely sociable kittiwake-gulls, among whom quarrels are rare and short ; the prepossessing polar guillemots, which continually caress each other ; the egoist she-goose, who has repudiated the orphans of a killed comrade ; and, by her side, another female who adopts any one’s orphans, and now paddles surrounded by fifty or sixty youngsters, whom she conducts and cares for as if they all were her own breed. Side by side with the penguins, which steal one another’s eggs, you have the dotterels, whose family relations are so “charming and touching ” that even passionate hunters recoil from shooting a female surrounded by her young ones ; or the eider-ducks, among which (like the velvet-ducks, or the coroyas of the Savannahs) several females hatch together in the same nest ; or the lums, which sit in turn upon a common covey. Nature is
1 The Arctic Voyages of A.E. Nordenskjold, London, 1879, p. 135. See also the powerful description of the St. Kilda Islands by Mr. Dixon (quoted by Seebohm), and nearly all books of Arctic travel.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
35
variety itself, offering all possible varieties of characters, from the basest to the highest : and that is why she cannot be depicted by any sweeping assertion. Still less can she be judged from the moralist’s point of view, because the views of the moralist are themselves a result — mostly unconscious — of the observation of Nature.^
Coming together at nesting-time is so common with most birds that more examples are scarcely needed. Our trees are crowned with groups of crows’ nests ; our hedges are full of nests of smaller birds ; our farmhouses give shelter to colonies of swallows ; our old towers are the refuge of hundreds of nocturnal birds ; and pages might be filled with the most charm¬ ing descriptions of the peace and harmony which prevail in almost all these nesting associations. As to the protection derived by the weakest birds from their unions, it is evident. That excellent observer, Dr. Coues, saw, for instance, the little cliff-swallows nesting in the immediate neighbourhood of the prairie falcon {Falco polyargus). The falcon had its nest on the top of one of the minarets of clay which are so common in the canons of Colorado, while a colony of swallows nested just beneath. The little peaceful birds had no fear of their rapacious neighbour ; they never let it approach to their colony. They immediately surrounded it and chased it, so that it had to make off at once.^
^ See Appendix III.
* Elliot Coues, in Bulletin U.S. Geol. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7, pp. 556, 579, etc. Among the gulls {Larus argentatus), Polyakoff saw on a marsh in Northern Russia, that the nesting- grounds of a very great number of these birds were always patrolled by one male, which warned the colony of the approach of danger. All birds rose in such case and attacked the enemy with great vigour.
36
MUTUAL AID
Life in societies does not cease when the nesting period is over ; it begins then in a new form. The young broods gather in societies of youngsters, gener¬ ally including several species. Social life is practised at that time chiefly for its own sake — partly for security, but chiefly for the pleasures derived from it. So we see in our forests the societies formed by the young nuthatchers {Sitta ccesia), together with tit- mouses, chaffinches, wrens, tree-creepers, or some wood-peckers.^ In Spain the swallow is met with in company with kestrels, fly-catchers, and even pigeons. In the Far West of America the young horned larks live in large societies, together with another lark (Sprague’s), the skylark, the Savannah sparrow, and several species of buntings and longspurs.^ In fact, it would be much easier to describe the species -which live isolated than to simply name those species which join the autumnal societies of young birds — not for hunting or nesting purposes, but simply to enjoy life in society and to spend their time in plays and sports, after having given a few hours every day to find their daily food.
And, finally, we have that immense display of mutual aid among birds — their migrations — which I dare not even enter upon in this place. Sufficient to say that birds which have lived for months in small
The females, which had five or six nests together on each knoll of the marsh, kept a certain order in leaving their nests in search of food. The fledglings, which otherwise are extremely unprotected and easily become the prey of the rapacious birds, were never left alone (“ Family Habits among the Aquatic Birds,” in Proceedings of the Zool. Section of St. Petersburg Soc. of Nat., Dec. 17, 1874).
1 Brehm Father, quoted by A. Brehm, iv. 34 seq. See also White’s Natural History of Selborne, Letter XI.
2 Dr. Coues, Birds of Dakota and Montana, in Bulletin US. Survey of Territories, iv. No. 7.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
37
bands scattered over a wide territory gather in thousands ; they come together at a given place, for several days in succession, before they start, and they evidently discuss the particulars of the journey. Some species will indulge every afternoon in flights prepara¬ tory to the long passage. All wait for their tardy congeners, and finally they start in a certain well- chosen direction — a fruit of accumulated collective experience — the strongest flying at the head of the band, and relieving one another in that difficult task. They cross the seas in large bands consisting of both big and small birds, and when they return next spring they repair to the same spot, and, in most cases, each of them takes possession of the very same nest which it had built or repaired the previous year.^
This subject is so vast, and yet so imperfectly studied ; it offers so many striking illustrations of mutual-aid habits, subsidiary to the main fact of migration — each of which would, however, require a special study — that I must refrain from entering here into more details. I can only cursorily refer to the numerous and animated gatherings of birds which take place, always on the same spot, before they begin their long journeys north or south, as also those which one sees in the north, after the birds have arrived at their breeding-places on the Yenisei or in the northern counties of England. For many days in
^ It has often been intimated that larger birds may occasionally transport some of the smaller birds when they cross together the Mediterranean, but the fact still remains doubtful. On the other side, it is certain that some smaller birds join the bigger ones for migration. The fact has been noticed several times, and it was recently confirmed by L. Buxbaum at Raunheim. He saw several parties of cranes which had larks flying in the midst and on both sides of their migratory columns {Der zoologische Garten, 1886, p.
133)-
38
MUTUAL AID
succession — sometimes one month — they will come together every morning for one hour, before flying in search of food — perhaps discussing the spot where they are going to build their nestsd And if, during the migration, their columns are overtaken by a storm, birds of the most different species will be brought together by common misfortune. The birds which are not exactly migratory, but slowly move northwards and southwards with the seasons, also perform these peregrinations in flocks. So far from migrating isolately, in order to secure for each separate individual the advantages of better food or shelter which are to be found in another district — they always wait for each other, and gather in flocks, before they move north or south. In accordance with the season.^
Going now over to mammals, the first thing which strikes us is the overwhelming numerical predominance of social species over those few carnivores which do not associate. The plateaus, the Alpine tracts, and the Steppes of the Old and New World are stocked with herds of deer, antelopes, gazelles, fallow deer, buffaloes, wild goats and sheep, all of which are sociable animals. When the Europeans came to settle in America, they found it so densely peopled with buffaloes, that pioneers had to stop their advance when a column of migrating buffaloes came to cross the route they followed ; the march past of the dense
^ H. Seebohm and Ch. Dixon both mention this habit.
2 The fact is well known to every field-naturalist, and with refer¬ ence to England several examples may be found in Charles Dixon’s Among the Birds in Northern Shires. The chaffinches arrive during winter in vast flocks; and about the same time, i.e. in November, come flocks of bramblings ; redwings also frequent the same places “in similar large companies,” and so on (pp. 165, 166).
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
39
column lasting sometimes for two and three days. And when the Russians took possession of Siberia they found it so densely peopled with deer, antelopes, squirrels, and other sociable animals, that the very conquest of Siberia was nothing but a hunting expedi¬ tion which lasted for two hundred years ; while the grass plains of Eastern Africa are still covered with herds composed of zebra, the hartebeest, and other antelopes.
Not long ago the small streams of Northern America and Northern Siberia were peopled with colonies of beavers, and up to the seventeenth century like colonies swarmed in Northern Russia. The flat lands of the four great continents are still covered with countless colonies of mice, ground-squirrels, marmots, and other rodents. In the lower latitudes of Asia and Africa the forests are still the abode of numerous families of elephants, rhinoceroses, and numberless societies of monkeys. In the far north the reindeer aggregate in numberless herds ; while still further north we find the herds of the musk-oxen and number¬ less bands of polar foxes. The coasts of the ocean are enlivened by flocks of seals and morses ; its waters, by shoals of sociable cetaceans ; and even in the depths of the great plateau of Central Asia we find herds of wild horses, wild donkeys, wild camels, and wild sheep. All these mammals live in societies and nations sometimes numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, although now, after three centuries of gunpowder civilization, we find but the ddbris of the immense aggregations of old. How trifling, in com¬ parison with them, are the numbers of the carnivores ! And how false, therefore, is the view of those who spe^k of the animal world as if nothing were to be
40
MUTUAL AID
seen in it but lions and hyenas plunging their bleeding teeth into the flesh of their victims ! One might as well imagine that the whole of human life is nothing but a succession of war massacres.
Association and mutual aid are the rule with mam¬ mals. We find social habits even among the carni¬ vores, and we can only name the cat tribe (lions, tigers, leopards, etc.) as a division the members of which decidedly prefer isolation to society, and are but seldom met with even in small groups. And yet, even among lions “ this is a very common practice to hunt in company.” ^ The two tribes of the civets ( Viverridd) and the weasels (Afustelidcs) might also be characterized by their isolated life, but it is a fact that during the last century the common weasel was more sociable than it is now ; it was seen then in larger groups in Scotland and in the Unterwalden canton of Switzerland. As to the great tribe of the dogs, it is eminently sociable, and association for hunting purposes may be considered as eminently characteristic of its numerous species. It is well known, in fact, that wolves gather in packs for hunting, and Tschudi left an excellent description of how they draw up in a half-circle, surround a cow which is grazing on a mountain slope, and then, suddenly appearing with a loud barking, make it roll in the abyss.2 Audubon, in the thirties, also saw the Labrador wolves hunting in packs, and one pack following a man to his cabin, and killing the dogs. During severe winters the packs of wolves grow so numerous as to become a danger for human settle¬ ments, as was the case in France some five-and-forty
^ S. W. Baker, Wi7d Beasts, etc., vol. i. p. 316.
2 Tschudi, Thierleben der Alpenwelt, p. 404.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
41
years ago. In the Russian Steppes they never attack the horses otherwise than in packs ; and yet they have to sustain bitter fights, during which the horses (according to Kohl’s testimony) sometimes assume offensive warfare, and in such cases, if the wolves do not retreat promptly, they run the risk of being surrounded by the horses and killed by their hoofs. The prairie-wolves [Canis latrans) are known to associate in bands of from twenty to thirty individuals when they chase a buffalo occasionally separated from its herd.^ Jackals, which are most courageous and may be considered as one of the most intelligent representatives of the dog tribe, always hunt in packs ; thus united, they have no fear of the bigger carnivores.^ As to the wild dogs of Asia (the Kholzuns^ or Dholes), Williamson saw their large packs attacking all larger animals save elephants and rhinoceroses, and over¬ powering bears and tigers. Hyenas always live in societies and hunt in packs, and the hunting organiz¬ ations of the painted lycaons are highly praised by Gumming. Nay, even foxes, which, as a rule, live isolated in our civilized countries, have been seen combining for hunting purposes.^ As to the polar fox, it is — or rather was in Steller’s time — one of the most sociable animals ; and when one reads Steller’s descrip¬ tion of the war that was waged by Behring’s un¬ fortunate crew against these intelligent small animals, one does not know what to wonder at most : the extraordinary intelligence of the foxes and the mutual aid they displayed in digging out food concealed under cairns, or stored upon a pillar (one fox would climb on
' Houzeau’s J^tudes, ii. 463.
2 For their hunting associations see Sir E. Tennant’s Natural History of Ceylon, quoted in Romanes’s Animal Intelligence, p. 432.
2 See Emil Hiiter’s letter in L. Buchner’s Liebe.
42
MUTUAL AID
its top and throw the food to its comrades beneath), or the cruelty of man, driven to despair by the numer¬ ous packs of foxes. Even some bears live in societies where they are not disturbed by man. Thus Steller saw the black bear of Kamtchatka in numerous packs, and .the polar bears are occasionally found in small groups. Even the unintelligent insectivores do not always disdain association.^
However, it is especially with the rodents, the un- gulata, and the ruminants that we find a highly- developed practice of mutual aid. The squirrels are individualist to a great extent. Each of them builds its own comfortable nest, and accumulates its own provision. Their inclinations are towards family life, and Brehm found that a family of squirrels is never so happy as when the two broods of the same year can join together with their parents in a remote corner of a forest. And yet they maintain social relations. The inhabitants of the separate nests remain in a close intercourse, and when the pine-cones become rare in the forest they inhabit, they emigrate in bands. As to the black squirrels of the Far West, they are eminently sociable. Apart from the few hours given every day to foraging, they spend their lives in playing in numerous parties. And when they multiply too rapidly in a region, they assemble in bands, almost as numerous as those of locusts, and move southwards, devastating the forests, the fields, and the gardens ; while foxes, polecats, falcons, and nocturnal birds of prey follow their thick columns and live upon the individuals remaining behind. The ground-squirrel — a closely-akin genus — is still more sociable. It is given to hoarding, and stores up in its subterranean ^ See Appendix IV.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
43
halls large amounts of edible roots and nuts, usually plundered by man in the autumn. According to some observers, it must know something of the joys of a miser. And yet it remains sociable. It always lives in large villages, and Audubon, who opened some dwellings of the hackee in the winter, found several individuals in the same apartment ; they must have stored it with common efforts.
The large tribe of the marmots, which includes the three large genuses of Arctomys, Cynomys, and Sper- mophilus, is still more sociable and still more intelligent. They also prefer having each one its own dwelling ; but they live in big villages. That terrible enemy of the crops of South Russia — the souslik — of which some ten millions are exterminated every year by man alone, lives in numberless colonies ; and while the Russian provincial assemblies gravely discuss the means of getting rid of this enemy of society, it enjoys life in its thousands in the most joyful way. Their play is so charming that no observer could refrain from paying them a tribute of praise, and from mention¬ ing the melodious concerts arising from the sharp whistlings of the males and the melancholic whistlings of the females, before — suddenly returning to his citizen’s duties — he begins inventing the most diabolic means for the extermination of the little robbers. All kinds of rapacious birds and beasts of prey having proved powerless, the last word of science in this warfare is the inoculation of cholera ! The villages of the prairie-dogs in America are one of the loveliest sights. As far as the eye can embrace the prairie, it sees heaps of earth, and on each of them a prairie-dog stands, engaged in a lively conversation with its neighbours by means of short barkings. As soon as
44
MUTUAL AID
the approach of man is signalled, all plunge in a moment into their dwellings ; all have disappeared as by enchantment. But if the danger is over, the little creatures soon reappear. Whole families come out of their galleries and indulge in play. The young ones scratch one another, they worry one another, and display their gracefulness while standing upright, and in the meantime the old ones keep watch. They go visiting one another, and the beaten footpaths which connect all their heaps testify to the frequency of the visitations. In short, the best naturalists have written some of their best pages in describing the associations of the prairie-dogs of America, the marmots of the Old World, and the polar marmots of the Alpine regions. And yet, I must make, as regards the marmots, the same remark as I have made when speaking of the bees. They have maintained their fighting instincts, and these instincts reappear in captivity. But in their big associations, in the face of free Nature, the un¬ sociable instincts have no opportunity to develop, and the general result is peace and harmony.
Even such harsh animals as the rats, which con¬ tinually fight in our cellars, are sufficiently intelligent not to quarrel when they plunder our larders, but to aid one another in their plundering expeditions and migrations, and even to feed their invalids. As to the beaver-rats or musk-rats of Canada, they are extremely sociable. Audubon could not’but admire “ their peace¬ ful communities, which require only being left in peace to enjoy happiness.” Like all sociable animals, they are lively and playful, they easily combine with other species, and they have attained a very high degree of intellectual development. In their villages, always disposed on the shores of lakes and rivers, they take
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
45
into account the changing level of water ; their dome¬ shaped houses, which are built of beaten clay inter¬ woven with reeds, have separate corners for organic refuse, and their halls are well carpeted at winter¬ time ; they are warm, and, nevertheless, well ventilated. As to the beavers, which are endowed, as known, with a most sympathetic character, their astounding dams and villages, in which generations live and die without knowing of any enemies but the otter and man, so wonderfully illustrate what mutual aid can achieve for the security of the species, the develop¬ ment of social habits, and the evolution of intelligence, that they are familiar to all interested in animal life. Let me only remark that with the beavers, the musk¬ rats, and some other rodents, we already find the feature which will also be distinctive of human com¬ munities — that is, work in common.
I pass in silence the two large families which include the jerboa, the chinchilla, the biscacha, and the tushkan, or underground hare of South Russia, though all these small rodents might be taken as excellent illustrations of the pleasures derived by animals from social life.* Precisely, the pleasures ; because it is extremely diffi¬ cult to say what brings animals together — the needs of mutual protection, or simply the pleasure of feeling surrounded by their congeners. At any rate, our common hares, which do not gather in societies for life
^ With regard to the viscacha it is very interesting to note that these highly-sociable little animals not only live peaceably together in each village, but that whole villages visit each other at nights. Sociability is thus extended to the whole species — not only to a given society, or to a nation, as we saw it with the ants. When the farmer destroys a viscacha-burrow, and buries the inhabitants under a heap of earth, other viscachas — we are told by Hudson — “come from a distance to dig out those that are buried alive” (/. f., p. 31 1). This is a widely known fact in La Plata, verified by the author.
46
MUTUAL AID
in common, and which are not even endowed with intense parental feelings, cannot live without coming together for play. Dietrich de Winckell, who is considered to be among the best acquainted with the habits of hares, describes them as passionate players, becoming so intoxicated by their play that a hare has been known to take an approaching fox for a playmate.^ As to the rabbit, it lives in societies, and its family life is entirely built upon the image of the old patri¬ archal family ; the young ones being kept in absolute obedience to the father and even the grandfather. ^ And here we have the example of two very closely- allied species which cannot bear each other — not because they live upon nearly the same food, as like cases are too often explained, but most probably because the passionate, eminently-individualist hare cannot make friends with that placid, quiet, and sub¬ missive creature, the rabbit. Their tempers are too widely different not to be an obstacle to friendship.
Life in societies is again the rule with the large family of horses, which includes the wild horses and donkeys of Asia, the zebras, the mustangs, the cimar- rones of the Pampas, and the half-wild horses of Mongolia and Siberia. They all live in numerous associations made up of many studs, each of which consists of a number of mares under the leadership of a male. These numberless inhabitants of the Old and the New World, badly organized on the whole for resisting both their numerous enemies and the adverse conditions of climate, would soon have disappeared
^ Handbuch fiir Jdger und Jagdberechtigie, quoted by Brehm, ii. 223.
2 Buffon’s Histoire NatureUe.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
47
from the surface of the earth were it not for their sociable spirit. When a beast of prey approaches them, several studs unite at once ; they repulse the beast and sometimes chase it : and neither the wolf nor the bear, not even the lion, can capture a horse or even a zebra as long as they are not detached from the herd. When a drought is burning the grass in the prairies, they gather in herds of sometimes 10,000 individuals strong, and migrate. And when a snow¬ storm rages in the Steppes, each stud keeps close together, and repairs to a protected ravine. But if confidence disappears, or the group has been seized by panic, and disperses, the horses perish and the survivors are found after the storm half dying from fatigue. Union is their chief arm in the struggle for life, and man is their chief enemy. Before his increas¬ ing numbers the ancestors of our domestic horse (the Equus Przewalskiiy so named by Polyakoff) have pre¬ ferred to retire to the wildest and least accessible plateaus on the outskirts of Thibet, where they con¬ tinue to live, surrounded by carnivores, under a climate as bad as that of the Arctic regions, but in a region inaccessible to man.^
Many striking illustrations of social life could be taken from the life of the reindeer, and especially of
1 In connection with the horses it is worthy of notice that the quagga zebra, which never comes together with the dauw zebra, nevertheless lives on excellent terms, not only with ostriches, which are very good sentries, but also with gazelles, several species of antelopes, and gnus. We thus have a case of mutual dislike between the quagga and the dauw which cannot be explained by competition for food. The fact that the quagga lives together with ruminants feeding on the same grass as itself excludes that hypothesis, and we must look for some incompatibility of character, as in the case of the hare and the rabbit. Cf., among others, Clive Phillips-Wolley’s Big Game Shooting (Badminton Library), which contains excellent illustrations of various species living together in East Africa.
48
MUTUAL AID
that large division of ruminants which might include the roebucks, the fallow deer, the antelopes, the gazelles, the ibex, and, in fact, the whole of the three numerous families of the Antelopides, the Caprides, and the Ovides. Their watchfulness over the safety of their herds against attacks of carnivores ; the anxiety displayed by all individuals in a herd of chamois as long as all of them have not cleared a difficult passage over rocky cliffs ; the adoption of orphans ; the despair of the gazelle whose mate, or even comrade of the same sex, has been killed ; the plays of the youngsters, and many other features, could be mentioned. But perhaps the most striking illustration of mutual support is given by the occa¬ sional migrations of fallow deer, such as I saw once on the Amur, When I crossed the high plateau and its border ridge, the Great Khingan, on my way from Transbaikalia to Merghen, and further travelled over the high prairies on my way to the Amur, I could ascertain how thinly-peopled with fallow deer these mostly uninhabited regions are.^ Two years later I was travelling up the Amur, and by the end of October reached the lower end of that picturesque gorge which the Amur pierces in the Dousse-alin (Little Khingan) before it enters the lowlands where it joins the Sungari. I found the Cossacks in the villages of that gorge in the greatest excitement, because thousands and thousands of fallow deer were crossing the Amur where it is narrowest, in order to reach the lowlands. For several days in succession,
^ Our Tungus hunter, who was going to marry, and therefore was prompted by the desire of getting as many furs as he possibly could, was beating the hill-sides all day long on horseback in search of deer. His efforts were not rewarded by even so much as one fallow deer killed every day ; and he was an excellent hunter.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
49
upon a length of some forty miles up the river, the Cossacks were butchering the deer as they crossed the Amur, in which already floated a good deal of ice. Thousands were killed every day, and the exodus nevertheless continued. Like migrations were never seen either before or since, and this one must have been called for by an early and heavy snow-fall in the Great Khingan, which compelled the deer to make a desperate attempt at reaching the lowlands in the east of the Dousse mountains. Indeed, a few days later the Dousse-alin was also buried under snow two or three feet deep. Now, when one imagines the immense territory (almost as big as Great Britain) from which the scattered groups of deer must have gathered for a migration which was undertaken under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, and realizes the difficulties which had to be overcome before all the deer came to the common idea of crossing the Amur further south, where it is narrowest, one cannot but deeply admire the amount of sociability displayed by these intelligent animals. The fact is not the less striking if we remember that the buffaloes of North America displayed the same powers of combination. One saw them grazing in great numbers in the plains, but these numbers were made up by an infinity of small groups which never mixed together. And yet, when necessity arose, all groups, however scattered over an immense territory, came together and made up those immense columns, numbering hundreds of thousands of individuals, which I mentioned on a preceding page.
I also ought to say a few words at least about the “ compound families ” of the elephants, their mutual attachment, their deliberate ways in posting sentries,
E
50
MUTUAL AID
and the feelings of sympathy developed by such a life of close mutual support.^ I might mention the soci¬ able feelings of those disreputable creatures the wild boars, and find a word of praise for their powers of association in the case of an attack by a beast of prey.^ The hippopotamus and the rhinoceros, too, would occupy a place in a work devoted to animal sociability. Several striking pages might be given to the soci¬ ability and mutual attachment of the seals and the walruses ; and finally, one might mention the most excellent feelings existing among the sociable ceta¬ ceans. But I have to say yet a few words about the societies of monkeys, which acquire an additional interest from their being the link which will bring us to the societies of primitive men.
It is hardly needful to say that those mammals, which stand at the very top of the animal world and most approach man by their structure and intelligence, are eminently sociable. Evidently we must be pre¬ pared to meet with all varieties of character and habits in so great a division of the animal kingdom which includes hundreds of species. But, all things con¬ sidered, it must be said that sociability, action in common, mutual protection, and a high development of those feelings which are the necessary outcome of social life, are characteristic of most monkeys and apes. From the smallest species to the biggest ones, sociability is a rule to which we know but a few
^ According to Samuel VV. Baker, elephants combine in larger groups than the “compound family.” “I have frequently observed,” he wrote, “ in the portion of Ceylon known as the Park Country, the tracks of elephants in great numbers which have evidently been considerable herds that have joined together in a general retreat from a ground which they considered insecure ” ( IVi/d Beasts and their Ways, vol. i. p. 102).
2 Pigs, attacked by wolves, do the same (Hudson, /. c.).
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
51
exceptions. The nocturnal apes prefer isolated life ; the capuchins [Cebus capucinus), the monos, and the howling monkeys live but in small families ; and the orang-outans have never been seen by A. R. Wallace otherwise than either solitary or in very small groups of three or four individuals, while the gorillas seem never to join in bands. But all the remainder of the monkey tribe — the chimpanzees, the sajous, the sakis, the mandrills, the baboons, and so on — are sociable in the highest degree. They live in great bands, and even join with other species than their own. Most of them become quite unhappy when solitary. The cries of distress of each one of the band immediately bring together the whole of the band, and they boldly repulse the attacks of most carnivores and birds of prey. Even eagles do not dare attack them. They plunder our fields always in bands — the old ones taking care for the safety of the commonwealth. The little tee-tees, whose childish sweet faces so much struck Humboldt, embrace and protect one another when it rains, rolling their tails over the necks of their shivering comrades. Several species display the greatest solicitude for their wounded, and do not abandon a wounded comrade during a retreat till they have ascertained that it is dead and that they are help¬ less to restore it to life. Thus James Forbes narrated in his Oriental Memoirs a fact of such resistance in reclaiming from his hunting party the dead body of a female monkey that one fully understands why “ the witnesses of this extraordinary scene resolved never again to fire at one of the monkey race.” ^ In some species several individuals will combine to overturn a stone in order to search for ants’ eggs under it. The ^ Romanes’s Animal Intelligence., p. 472.
52
MUTUAL AID
hamadryas not only post sentries, but have been seen making a chain for the transmission of the spoil to a safe place ; and their courage is well known. Brehm’s description of the regular fight which his caravan had to sustain before the hamadryas would let it resume its journey in the valley of the Mensa, in Abyssinia, has become classical.^ The playfulness of the tailed apes and the mutual attachment which reigns in the families of chimpanzees also are familiar to the general reader. And if we find among the highest apes two species, the orang-outan and the gorilla, which are not sociable, we must remember that both — limited as they are to very small areas, the one in the heart of Africa, and the other in the two islands of Borneo and Sumatra — have all the appearance of being the last remnants of formerly much more numerous species. The gorilla at least seems to have been sociable in olden times, if the apes mentioned in the Periplus really were gorillas.
We thus see, even from the above brief review, that life in societies is no exception in the animal world ; it is the rule, the law of Nature, and it reaches its fullest development with the higher vertebrates. Those species which live solitary, or in small families only, are relatively few, and their numbers are limited. Nay, it appears very probable that, apart from a few exceptions, those birds and mammals which are not gregarious now, were living in societies before man multiplied on the earth and waged a permanent war against them, or destroyed the sources from which
^ Brehm, i. 82 ; Darwin’s Descent of Man, ch. iii. The Kozloff expedition of 1899-1901 have also had to sustain in Northern Thibet a similar fight.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
53
they formerly derived food. “ On ne s’associe pas pour mourir,” was the sound remark of Espinas ; and Houzeau, who knew the animal world of some parts of America when it was not yet affected by man, wrote to the same effect.
Association is found in the animal world at all degrees of evolution ; and, according to the grand idea of Herbert Spencer, so brilliantly developed in Perrier’s Colonies Animal es, colonies are at the very origin of evolution in the animal kingdom. But, in proportion as we ascend the scale of evolution, we see association growing more and more conscious. It loses its purely physical character, it ceases to be simply instinctive, it becomes reasoned. With the higher vertebrates it is periodical, or is resorted to for the satisfaction of a given want — propagation of the species, migration, hunting, or mutual defence. It even becomes occasional, when birds associate against a robber, or mammals combine, under the pressure of exceptional circumstances, to emigrate. In this last case, it becomes a voluntary deviation from habitual moods of life. The combination sometimes appears in two or more degrees — the family first, then the group, and finally the association of groups, habitually scattered, but uniting in case of need, as we saw it with the bisons and other ruminants. It also takes higher forms, guaranteeing more independence to the individual without depriving it of the benefits of social life. With most rodents the individual has its own dwelling, which it can retire to when it prefers being left alone ; but the dwellings are laid out in villages and cities, so as to guarantee to all inhabitants the benefits and joys of social life. And finally, in several species, such as rats, marmots, hares, etc.,
54
MUTUAL AID
sociable life is maintained notwithstanding the quarrel¬ some or otherwise egotistic inclinations of the isolated individual. Thus it is not imposed, as is the case with ants and bees, by the very physiological structure of the individuals ; it is cultivated for the benefits of mutual aid, or for the sake of its pleasures. And this, of course, appears with all possible gradations and with the greatest variety of individual and specific characters — the very variety of aspects taken by social life being a consequence, and for us a further proof, of its generality.^
Sociability — that is, the need of the animal of associating with its like — the love of society for society’s sake, combined with the “joy of life,” only now begins to receive due attention from the zoologists.^ We know at the present time that all animals, beginning with the ants, going on to the birds, and ending with the highest mammals, are fond of plays, wrestling, running after each other, trying to capture each other, teasing each other, and so on. And while many plays are, so to speak, a school for the proper behaviour of the young in mature life, there are others, which, apart from their utilitarian purposes, are, together with dancing and singing, mere manifestations of an excess of forces — “ the joy of life,” and a desire to communi¬ cate in some way or another with other individuals of
^ The more strange was it to read in the previously-mentioned article by Huxley the following paraphrase of a well-known sentence of Rousseau : “ The first men who substituted mutual peace for that of mutual war — whatever the motive which impelled them to take that step — created society" {Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1888, p. 165). Society has not been created by man ; it is anterior to man.
2 Such monographs as the chapter on “ Music and Dancing in Nature” which we have in Hudson’s Naturalist on the La Plata, and Carl Gross’ Play of Animals, have already thrown a considerable light upon an instinct which is absolutely universal in Nature.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
55
the same or of other species — in short, a manifestation of sociability proper, which is a distinctive feature of all the animal world.^ Whether the feeling be fear, experienced at the appearance of a bird of prey, or “ a fit of gladness ” which bursts out when the animals are in good health and especially when young, or merely the desire of giving play to an excess of impressions and of vital power — the necessity of communicating impressions, of playing, of chattering, or of simply feeling the proximity of other kindred living beings pervades Nature, and is, as much as any other physio¬ logical function, a distinctive feature of life and impres¬ sionability. This need takes a higher development and attains a more beautiful expression in mammals, especially amidst their young, and still more among the birds ; but it pervades all Nature, and has been fully observed by the best naturalists, including Pierre Huber, even amongst the ants, and it is evidently the same instinct which brings together the big columns of butterflies which have been referred to already.
The habit of coming together for dancing and of decorating the places where the birds habitually perform their dances is, of course, well known from the pages that Darwin gave to this subject in The Descent of Man (ch. xiii.). Visitors of the London Zoological Gardens also know the bower of the satin bower-bird. But this habit of dancing seems to be much more widely spread than was formerly believed, and Mr. W.
^ Not only numerous species of birds possess the habit of assembling together — in many cases always at the same spot — to indulge in antics and dancing performances, but VV. H. Hudson’s experience is that nearly all mammals and birds (“ probably there are really no exceptions ”) indulge frequently in more or less regular or set performances with or without sound, or composed of sound exclusively (p. 264).
56
MUTUAL AID
Hudson gives in his master- work on La Plata the most interesting description, which must be read in the original, of complicated dances, performed by quite a number of birds ; rails, jacanas, lapwings, and so on.
The habit of singing in concert, which exists in several species of birds, belongs to the same category of social instincts. It is most strikingly developed with the chakar {Chaiina chavarria), to which the English have given the most unimaginative misnomer of “crested screamer.” These birds sometimes assemble in immense flocks, and in such cases they frequently sing all in concert. W. H. Hudson found them once in countless numbers, ranged all round a pampas lake in well-defined flocks, of about 500 birds in each flock.
“ Presently,” he writes, “ one flock near me began singing, and continued their powerful chant for three or four minutes ; when they ceased the next flock took up the strains, and after it the next, and so on, until once more the notes of the flocks on the opposite shore came floating strong and clear across the water — then passed away, growing fainter and fainter, until once more the sound approached me travelling round to my side again.”
On another occasion the same writer saw a whole plain covered with an endless flock of chakars, not in close order, but scattered in pairs and small groups. About nine o’clock in the evening, “ suddenly the entire multitude of birds covering the marsh for miles around burst forth in a tremendous evening song. . . . It was a concert well worth riding a hundred miles to hear.” ^ It may be added that like all sociable animals, the chakar easily becomes tame and grows very attached to man. “ They are mild-tempered birds, and
^ For the choruses of monkeys, see Brehm.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
57
very rarely quarrel ” — we are told — although they are well provided with formidable weapons. Life in societies renders these weapons useless.
That life in societies is the most powerful weapon in the struggle for life, taken in its widest sense, has been illustrated by several examples on the foregoing pages, and could be illustrated by any amount of evidence, if further evidence were required. Life in societies enables the feeblest insects, the feeblest birds, and the feeblest mammals to resist, or to protect themselves from, the most terrible birds and beasts of prey ; it permits longevity ; it enables the species to rear its progeny with the least waste of energy and to maintain its numbers albeit a very slow birth-rate ; it enables the gregarious animals to migrate in search of new abodes. Therefore, while fully admitting that force, swiftness, protective colours, cunningness, and endur¬ ance to hunger and cold, which are mentioned by Darwin and Wallace, are so many qualities making the individual, or the species, the fittest under certain circumstances, we maintain that under any circum¬ stances sociability is the greatest advantage in the struggle for life. Those species which willingly or unwillingly abandon it are doomed to decay ; while those animals which know best how to combine, have the greatest chances of survival and of further evolu¬ tion, although they may be inferior to others in each of the faculties enumerated by Darwin and Wallace, save the intellectual faculty. The highest vertebrates, and especially mankind, are the best proof of this assertion. As to the intellectual faculty, while every Darwinist will agree with Darwin that it is the most powerful arm in the struggle for life, and the most
58
MUTUAL AID
powerful factor of further evolution, he also will admit that intelligence is an eminently social faculty. Language, imitation, and accumulated experience are so many elements of growing intelligence of which the unsociable animal is deprived. Therefore we find, at the top of each class of animals, the ants, the parrots, and the monkeys, all combining the greatest sociability with the highest development of intelligence. The fittest are thus the most sociable animals, and soci¬ ability appears as the chief factor of evolution, both directly, by securing the well-being of the species while diminishing the waste of energy, and indirectly, by favouring the growth of intelligence.
Moreover, it is evident that life in societies would be utterly impossible without a corresponding develop¬ ment of social feelings, and, especially, of a certain collective sense of justice growing to become a habit. If every individual were constantly abusing its personal advantages without the others interfering in favour of the wronged, no society-life would be possible. And feelings of justice develop, more or less, with all gregarious animals. Whatever the distance from which the swallows or the cranes come, each one returns to the nest it has built or repaired last year. If a lazy sparrow intends appropriating the nest which a comrade is building, or even steals from it a few sprays of straw, the group interferes against the lazy comrade ; and it is evident that without such inter¬ ference being the rule, no nesting associations of birds could exist. Separate groups of penguins have separate resting-places and separate fishing abodes, *and do not fight for them. The droves of cattle in Australia have particular spots to which each group repairs to rest, and from which it never deviates ; and
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
59
so on.^ We have any numbers of direct observations of the peace that prevails in the nesting associations of birds, the villages of the rodents, and the herds of grass-eaters ; while, on the other side, we know of few sociable animals which so continually quarrel as the rats in our cellars do, or as the morses, which fight for the possession of a sunny place on the shore. Sociability thus puts a limit to physical struggle, and leaves room for the development of better moral feel¬ ings. The high development of parental love in all classes of animals, even with lions and tigers, is generally known. As to the young birds and mam¬ mals whom we continually see associating, sympathy — not love — attains a further development in their associations. Leaving aside the really touching facts of mutual attachment and compassion which have been recorded as regards domesticated animals and with animals kept in captivity, we have a number of well- certified facts of compassion between wild animals at liberty. Max Perty and L. Buchner have given a number of such facts.^ J. C. Wood’s narrative of a weasel which came to pick up and to carry away an injured comrade enjoys a well-merited popularity.^ So also the observation of Captain Stansbury on his journey to Utah which is quoted by Darwin ; he saw a blind pelican which was fed, and well fed, by other pelicans upon fishes which had to be brought from
^ Haygarth, Bush Life in Australia^ p. 58.
® To quote but a few instances, a wounded badger was carried away by another badger suddenly appearing on the scene ; rats have been seen feeding a blind couple {Seeknleben der Thiere, p. 64 seq.). Brehm himself saw two crows feeding in a hollow tree a third crow which was wounded ; its wound was several weeks old (^ILausfreund, 1874, 715; Buchner’s Liebe, 203). Mr. Blyth saw Indian crows feeding two or three blind comrades ; and so on.
® Man and Beast, p. 344.
6o
MUTUAL AID
a distance of thirty milesT And when a herd of vicunas was hotly pursued by hunters, H. A. Weddell saw more than once during his journey to Bolivia and Peru, the strong males covering the retreat of the herd and lagging behind in order to protect the retreat. As to facts of compassion with wounded comrades, they are continually mentioned by all field zoologists. Such facts are quite natural. Compassion is a neces¬ sary outcome of social life. But compassion also means a considerable advance in general intelligence and sensibility. It is the first step towards the development of higher moral sentiments. It is, in its turn, a powerful factor of further evolution.
If the views developed on the preceding pages are correct, the question necessarily arises, in how far are they consistent v/ith the theory of struggle for life as it has been developed by Darwin, Wallace, and their followers ? and I will now briefly answer this important question. First of all, no naturalist will doubt that the idea of a struggle for life carried on through organic nature is the greatest general¬ ization of our century. Life is struggle ; and in that struggle the fittest survive. But the answers to the questions, “ By which arms is this struggle chiefly carried on ?” and “Who are the fittest in the strug¬ gle ? ” will widely differ according to the importance given to the two different aspects of the struggle : the direct one, for food and safety among separate individuals, and the struggle which Darwin described as “ metaphorical ” — the struggle, very often collective, against adverse circumstances. No one will deny that
^ L. H. Morgan, The American Beaver^ 1868, p. 272; Descent of Man, ch. iv.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
6i
there is, within each species, a certain amount of real competition for food — at least, at certain periods. But the question is, whether competition is carried on to the extent admitted by Darwin, or even by Wallace ; and whether this competition has played, in the evolution of the animal kingdom, the part assigned to it.
The idea which permeates Darwin’s work is certainly one of real competition going on within each animal group for food, safety, and possibility of leaving an offspring. He often speaks of regions being stocked with animal life to their full capacity, and from that overstocking he infers the necessity of competition. But when we look in his work for real proofs of that competition, we must confess that we do not find them sufficiently convincing. If we refer to the paragraph entitled “Struggle for Life most severe between Indi¬ viduals and Varieties of the same Species,” we find in it none of that wealth of proofs and illustrations which we are accustomed to find in whatever Darwin wrote. The struggle between individuals of the same species is not illustrated under that heading by even one single instance : it is taken as granted ; and the competition between closely-allied animal species is illustrated by but five examples, out of which one, at least (relating to the two species of thrushes), now proves to be doubtful.^ But when we look for more details in order
^ One species of swallow is said to have caused the decrease of another swallow species in North America ; the recent increase of the missel-thrush in Scotland has caused the decrease of the song-thrush; the brown rat has taken the place of the black rat in Europe ; in Russia the small cockroach has everywhere driven before it its greater congener; and in Australia the imported hive-bee is rapidly exter¬ minating the small stingless bee. Two other cases, but relative to domesticated animals, are mentioned in the preceding paragraph. While recalling these same facts, A. R. Wallace remarks in a foot¬ note relative to the Scottish thrushes : “ Prof. A. Newton, however,
62
MUTUAL AID
to ascertain how far the decrease of one species was really occasioned by the increase of the other species, Darwin, with his usual fairness, tells us ;
“ We can dimly see why the competition should be most severe between allied forms which fill nearly the same place in nature ; but probably in no case could we precisely say why one species has been victorious over another in the great battle of life.”
As to Wallace, who quotes the same facts under a slightly-modified heading (“ Struggle for Life between closely-allied Animals and Plants often most severe ”), he makes the following remark (italics are mine), which gives quite another aspect to the facts above quoted. He says ;
“In some cases, no doubt, there is actual war between the two, the stronger killing the weaker ; but this is by no means necessary, and there may be cases in which the weaker species, physically, may prevail by its power of more rapid multiplica¬ tion, its better withstanding vicissitudes of climate, or its greater cunning in escaping the attacks of common enemies.”
In such cases what is described as competition may be no competition at all. One species succumbs, not because it is exterminated or starved out by the other species, but because it does not well accommodate itself to new conditions, which the other does. The term “ struggle for life ” is again used in its metaphorical sense, and may have no other. As to the real compe-
informs me that these species do not interfere in the way here stated” {Darwinism, p. 34). As to the brown rat, it is known that, owing to its amphibian habits, it usually stays in the lower parts of human dwellings (low cellars, sewers, etc.^, as also on the banks of canals and rivers ; it also undertakes distant migrations in numberless bands. The black rat, on the contrary, prefers staying in our dwellings them¬ selves, under the floor, as well as in our stables and barns. It thus is much more exposed to be exterminated by man ; and we cannot maintain, with any approach to certainty, that the black rat is being either exterminated or starved out by the brown rat and not by man.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
63
tition between individuals of the same species, which is illustrated in another place by the cattle of South America during a period of drought, its value is impaired by its being taken from among domesticated animals. Bisons emigrate in like circumstances in order to avoid competition. However severe the struggle between plants — and this is amply proved — we cannot but repeat Wallace’s remark to the effect that “plants live where they can,” while animals have, to a great extent, the power of choice of their abode. So that we again are asking ourselves. To what extent does competition really exist within each animal species? Upon what is the assumption based?
The same remark must be made concerning the indirect argument in favour of a severe competition and struggle for life within each species, which may be derived from the “ extermination of transitional varieties,” so often mentioned by Darwin. It is known that for a long time Darwin was worried by the difficulty which he^aw In the absence of a long chain of intermediate_fgnns_l^w^n_ dos^e^allied species, and that he found the solution of this difficuTtydn the supposed ed^rmlnation of the Intermediate forms. ^ However, an attentive reading of the differehTchapters in which Darwin and Wallace speak of this subject soon brings one to the conclusion that the word “ extermination ” does not mean real extermination ;
^ “But it may be urged that when several closely-allied species inhabit the same territory, we surely ought to find at the present time many transitional forms. ... By my theory these allied species are descended from a common parent ; and during the process of modification, each has become adapted to the conditions of life of its own region, and has supplanted and exterminated its original parent-form and all the transitional varieties between its past and present states” {Origin of Species, 6th ed. p. 134); also p. 137, 296 (all paragraph “ On Extinction ”).
64
MUTUAL AID
the same remark which Darwin made concerning his expression : “struggle for existence,” evidently applies to the word “ extermination ” as well. It can by no means be understood in its direct sense, but must be taken “in its metaphoric sense.”
If we start from the supposition that a given area is stocked with animals to its fullest capacity, and that a keen competition for the sheer means of existence is consequently going on between all the inhabitants — each animal being compelled to fight against all its congeners in order to get its daily food — then the appearance of a new and successful variety would certainly mean in many cases (though not always) the appearance of individuals which are enabled to seize more than their fair share of the means of existence ; and the result would be that those individuals would starve both the parental form which does not possess the new variation and the intermediate forms which do not possess it in the same degree. It may be that at the outset, Darwin understood the appearance of new varieties under this aspect ; at least, the frequent use of the word “ extermination ” conveys such an impres¬ sion. But both he and Wallace knew Nature too well not to perceive that this is by no means the only possible and necessary course of affairs.
If the physical and the biological conditions of a given area, the extension of the area occupied by a given species, and the habits of all the members of the latter remained unchanged — then the sudden appear¬ ance of a new variety might mean the starving out and the extermination of all the individuals which were not endowed in a sufficient degree with the new feature by which the new variety is characterized. But such a combination of conditions is precisely what we do not
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
65
.see in Nature. Each species is continually tending to enlarge its abode ; migration to new abodes is the rule with the slow snail, as with the swift bird ; physical changes are continually going on in every given area ; and new varieties among animals consist in an immense number of cases — perhaps in the majority — not in the growth of new weapons for snatching the food from the mouth of its congeners — food is only one out of a hundred of various conditions of existence — but, as Wallace himself shows in a charming paragraph on the “ divergence of characters ” {^Darwinism, p. 107), in forming new habits, moving to new abodes, and taking to new sorts of food. In all such cases there will be no extermination, even no competition — the new adapt¬ ation being a relief from competition^ if it ever existed ; and yet there will be, after a time, an absence of inter¬ mediate links, in consequence of a mere survival of those which are best fitted for the new conditions — as surely as under the hypothesis of extermination of the parental form. It hardly need be added that if we admit, with Spencer, all the Lamarckians, and Darwin himself, the modifying influence of the surroundings upon the species, there remains still less necessity for the extermination of the intermediate forms.
The importance of migration and of the consequent isolation of groups of animals, for the origin of new varieties and ultimately of new species, which was indicated by Moritz Wagner, was fully recognized by Darwin himself. Subsequent researches have only accentuated the importance of this factor, and they have shown how the largeness of the area occupied by a given species — which Darwin considered with full reason so important for the appearance of new varieties — can be combined with the isolation of parts of the
F
66
MUTUAL AID
species, in consequence of local geological changes, or of local barriers. It would be impossible to enter here into the discussion of this wide question, but a few remarks will do to illustrate the combined action of these agencies. It is known that portions of a given species will often take to a new sort of food. The squirrels, for instance, when there is a scarcity of cones in the larch forests, remove to the fir-tree forests, and this change of food has certain well-known physio¬ logical effects on the squirrels. If this change of habits does not last — if next year the cones are again plentiful in the dark larch woods — no new variety of squirrels will evidently arise from this cause. But if part of the wide area occupied by the squirrels begins to have its physical characters altered — in con¬ sequence of, let us say, a milder climate or desiccation, which both bring about an increase of the pine forests in proportion to the larch woods — and if some other con¬ ditions concur to induce the squirrels to dwell on the outskirts of the desiccating region — we shall have then a new variety, i. e. an incipient new species of squirrels, without there having been anything that would deserve the name of extermination among the squirrels. A larger proportion of squirrels of the new, better- adapted variety would survive every year, and the intermediate links would die in the course of time, with¬ out having been starved out by Malthusian competitors. This is exactly what we see going on during the great physical changes which are accomplished over large areas in Central Asia, owing to the desiccation which is going on there since the glacial period.
To take another example, it has been proved by geologists that the present wild horse {Equus Prze- walski) has slowly been evolved during the later parts
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
67
of the Tertiary and the Quaternary period, but that during this succession of ages its ancestors were not confined to some given, limited area of the globe. They wandered over both the Old and New World, returning, in all probability, after a time to the pastures which they had, in the course of their migrations, formerly left.^ Consequently, if we do not find now, in Asia, all the intermediate links between the present wild horse and its Asiatic Post-Tertiary ancestors, this does not mean at all that the intermediate links have been exterminated. No such extermination has ever taken place. No exceptional mortality may even have occurred among the ancestral species : the individuals which belonged to intermediate varieties and species have died in the usual course of events — often amidst plentiful food, and their remains were buried all over the globe.
In short, if we carefully consider this matter, and carefully re-read what Darwin himself wrote upon this subject, we see that if the word “extermination” be used at all in connection with transitional varieties, it must be used in its metaphoric sense. As to “ com¬ petition,” this expression, too, is continually used by Darwin (see, for instance, the paragraph “ On Extinc¬ tion ”) as an image, or as a way-of-speaking, rather than with the intention of conveying the idea of a real competition between two portions of the same species for the means of existence. At any rate, the absence of intermediate forms is no argument in favour of it.
In reality, the chief argument in favour of a keen
^ According to Madame Marie Pavloff, who has made a special study of this subject, they migrated from Asia to Africa, stayed there some time, and returned next to Asia. Whether this double migration be confirmed or not, the fact of a former extension of the ancestor of our horse over Asia, Africa, and America is settled beyond doubt.
68
MUTUAL AID
competition for the means of existence continually going on within every animal species is — to use Pro¬ fessor Geddes’ expression — the “arithmetical argument” borrowed from Malthus.
But this argument does not prove it at all. We might as well take a number of villages in South-East Russia, the inhabitants of which enjoy plenty of food, but have no sanitary accommodation of any kind ; and seeing that for the last eighty years the birth-rate was sixty in the thousand, while the population is now what it was eighty years ago, we might conclude that there has been a terrible competition between the inhabitants. But the truth is that from year to year the population remained stationary, for the simple reason that one-third of the new-born died before reach¬ ing their sixth month of life ; one-half died within the next four years, and out of each hundred born, only seventeen or so reached the age of twenty. The new-comers went away before having grown to be competitors. It is evident that if such is the case with men, it is still more the case with animals. In the feathered world the destruction of the eggs goes on on such a tremendous scale that eggs are the chief food of several species in the early summer ; not to say a word of the storms, the inundations which destroy nests by the million in America, and the sudden changes of weather which are fatal to the young mammals. Each storm, each inundation, each visit of a rat to a bird’s nest, each sudden change of temperature, take away those competitors which appear so terrible in theory.
As to the facts of an extremely rapid increase of horses and cattle in America, of pigs and rabbits in New Zealand, and even of wild animals imported from
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
69
Europe (where their numbers are kept down by man, not by competition), they rather seem opposed to the theory of over-population. If horses and cattle could so rapidly multiply in America, it simply proved that, however numberless the buffaloes and other ruminants were at that time in the New World, its grass-eating population was far below what the prairies could main¬ tain. If millions of intruders have found plenty of food without starving out the former population of the prairies, we must rather conclude that the Europeans found a want of grass-eaters in America, not an excess. And we have good reasons to believe that want of animal population is the natural state of things all over the world, with but a few temporary exceptions to the rule. The actual numbers of animals in a given region are determined, not by the highest feeding capacity of the region, but by what it is every year under the most unfavourable conditions. So that, for that reason alone, competition hardly can be a normal condition ; but other causes intervene as well to cut down the animal population below even that low standard. If we take the horses and cattle which are grazing all the winter through in the Steppes of Trans¬ baikalia, we find them very lean and exhausted at the end of the winter. But they grow exhausted not because there is not enough food for all of them — the grass buried under a thin sheet of snow is everywhere in abundance — but because of the difficulty of getting it from beneath the snow, and this difficulty is the same for all horses alike. Besides, days of glazed frost are common in early spring, and if several such days come in succession the horses grow still more exhausted. But then comes a snow-storm, which com¬ pels the already weakened animals to remain without
70
MUTUAL AID
any food for several days, and very great numbers of them die. The losses during the spring are so severe that if the season has been more inclement than usual they are even not repaired by the new breeds — the more so as all horses are exhausted, and the young foals are born in a weaker condition. The numbers of horses and cattle thus always remain beneath what they otherwise might be ; all the year round there is food for five or ten times as many animals, and yet their population increases extremely slowly. But as soon as the Buriate owner makes ever so small a provision of hay in the steppe, and throws it open during days of glazed frost, or heavier snow-fall, he immediately sees the increase of his herd. Almost all free grass¬ eating animals and many rodents in Asia and America being in very much the same conditions, we can safely say that their numbers are not kept down by competi¬ tion ; that at no time of the year they can struggle for food, and that if they never reach anything approaching to over-population, the cause is in the climate, not in competition.
The importance of natural checks to over-multipli¬ cation, and especially their bearing upon the competi¬ tion hypothesis, seems never to have been taken into due account. The checks, or rather some of them, are mentioned, but their action is seldom studied in detail. However, if we compare the action of the natural checks with that of competition, we must recognize at once that the latter sustains no comparison whatever with the other checks. Thus, Mr. Bates mentions the really astounding numbers of winged ants which are destroyed during their exodus. The dead or half-dead bodies of the formica de fuego [Myrmica scevissima) which had been blown into the
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS 71
river during a gale “ were heaped in a line an inch or two in height and breadth, the line continuing without interruption for miles at the edge of the water.” ^ Myriads of ants are thus destroyed amidst a nature which might support a hundred times as many ants as are actually living. Dr. Altum, a German forester, who wrote a very interesting book about animals injurious to our forests, also gives many facts showing the immense importance of natural checks. He says that a succession of gales or cold and damp weather during the exodus of the pine-moth {Bombyx pini) destroy it to incredible amounts, and during the spring of 1871 all these moths disappeared at once, probably killed by a succession of cold nights.^ Many like examples relative to various insects could be quoted from various parts of Europe. Dr. Altum also men¬ tions the bird-enemies of the pine-moth, and the immense amount of its eggs destroyed by foxes ; but he adds that the parasitic fungi which periodically infest it are a far more terrible enemy than any bird, because they destroy the moth over very large areas at once. As to various species of mice [Mus sylvati- cus, Arvicola arvalis, and A. agrestis), the same author gives a long list of their enemies, but he remarks ; “ However, the most terrible enemies of mice are not other animals, but such sudden changes of weather as occur almost every year.” Alternations of frost and warm weather destroy them in numberless quantities ; “ one single sudden change can reduce thousands of mice to the number of a few individuals.” On the other side, a warm winter, or a winter which gradually
' The Naturalist on the River Amazons^ ii. 85, 95.
* Dr. B. Altum, Waldbeschddigungen durch Thiere und Gegenmittel (Berlin, 1889), pp. 207 seq.
72
MUTUAL AID
steps in, make them multiply in menacing proportions, notwithstanding every enemy ; such was the case in 1876 and 1877A Competition, in the case of mice, thus appears a quite trifling factor when compared with weather. Other facts to the same effect are also given as regards squirrels.
As to birds, it is well known how they suffer from sudden changes of weather. Late snow-storms are as destructive of bird-life on the English moors, as they are in Siberia ; and Ch. Dixon saw the red grouse so pressed during some exceptionally severe winters, that they quitted the moors in numbers, “ and we have then known them actually to be taken in the streets of Sheffield. Persistent wet,” he adds, “ is almost as fatal to them.”
On the other side, the contagious diseases which continually visit most animal species destroy them in such numbers that the losses often cannot be repaired for many years, even with the most rapidly-multiply¬ ing animals. Thus, some sixty years ago, the sousliks suddenly disappeared in the neighbourhood of Sarepta, in South-Eastern Russia, in consequence of some epidemics ; and for years no sousliks were seen in that neighbourhood. It took many years before they became as numerous as they formerly were.^
Like facts, all tending to reduce the importance given to competition, could be produced in numbers.® Of course, it might be replied, in Darwin s words, that nevertheless each organic being “ at some period of its life, during some season of the year, during each generation or at intervals, has to struggle for life and
1 Dr. B. Altum, ut supra, pp. 13 and 187.
2 A. Becker in the Bulletin de la Societe des Naturalistes de Moscou, 1889, p. 625.
8 See Appendix V,
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
73
to suffer great destruction,” and that the fittest survive during such periods of hard struggle for life. But if the evolution of the animal world were based exclu¬ sively, or even chiefly, upon the survival of the fittest during periods of calamities ; if natural selection were limited in its action to periods of exceptional drought, or sudden changes of temperature, or inundations, retrogression would be the rule in the animal world. Those who survive a famine, or a severe epidemic of cholera, or small-pox, or diphtheria, such as we see them in uncivilized countries, are neither the strongest, nor the healthiest, nor the most intelligent. No progress could be based on those survivals — the less so as all survivors usually come out of the ordeal with an impaired health, like the Transbaikalian horses just mentioned, or the Arctic crews, or the garrison of a fortress which has been compelled to live for a few months on half rations, and comes out of its experience with a broken health, and subsequently shows a quite abnormal mortality. All that natural selection can do in times of calamities is to spare the individuals endowed with the greatest endurance for privations of all kinds. So it does among the Siberian horses and cattle. They are enduring ; they can feed upon the Polar birch in case of need ; they resist cold and hunger. But no Siberian horse is capable of carrying half the weight which a European horse carries with ease ; no Siberian cow gives half the amount of milk given by a Jersey cow, and no natives of uncivilized countries can bear a comparison with Eur^eans. They m^ better Endure hunger and cold, but their physical force is very far below that of a well-fed European, and their intellectual progress is despair¬ ingly slow. “ Evil cannot be productive of good,” as
74
MUTUAL AID
Tchernyshevsky wrote in a remarkable essay upon Darwinism.^
Happily enough, competition is not the rule either in the animal world or in mankind. It is limited among animals to exceptional periods, and natural selection finds better fields for its activity. Better conditions are created by the elimination of competition by means of mutual aid and mutual support.^ In the great struggle for life — for the greatest possible fulness and intensity of life with the least waste of energy — natural selection continually seeks out the ways pre¬ cisely for avoiding competition as much as possible. The ants combine in nests and nations ; they pile up their stores, they rear their cattle — and thus avoid com¬ petition ; and natural selection picks out of the ants’ family the species which know best how to avoid com¬ petition, with its unavoidably deleterious consequences. Most of our birds slowly move southwards as the winter comes, or gather in numberless societies and under¬ take long journeys — and thus avoid competition. Many rodents fall asleep when the time comes that compe¬ tition should set in ; while other rodents store food for the winter, and gather in large villages for obtaining the necessary protection when at work. The reindeer, when the lichens are dry in the interior of the con¬ tinent, migrate towards the sea. Buffaloes cross an immense continent in order to find plenty of food. And the beavers, when they grow numerous on a
^ Russkaya Mysl, Sept. 1888: “The Theory of Beneficency of Struggle for Life, being a Preface to various Treatises on Botanies, Zoology, and Human Life,” by an Old Transformist.
^ “ 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.
MUTUAL AID AMONG ANIMALS
75
river, divide into two parties, and go, the old ones down the river, and the young ones up the river — and avoid competition. And when animals can neither fall asleep, nor migrate, nor lay in stores, nor them¬ selves grow their food like the ants, they do what the titmouse does, and what Wallace {Darwinism, ch. v.) has so charmingly described : they resort to new kinds of food — and thus, again, avoid competition,^
“ Don’t compete ! — competition is always injurious to the species, and you have plenty of resources to avoid it ! ” That is the tendency of nature, not always realized in full, but always present. That is the watchword which comes to us from the bush, the forest, the river, the ocean. “ Therefore combine — practise mutual aid ! That is the surest means for giving to each and to all the greatest safety, the best guarantee of existence and progress, bodily, intel¬ lectual, and moral.” That is what Nature teaches us; and that is what all those animals which have attained the highest position in their respective classes have done. That is also what man — the most primitive man — has been doing ; and that is why man has reached the position upon which we stand now, as we shall see in the subsequent chapters devoted to mutual aid in human societies.
1 See Appendix VI.
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
76
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
77
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 per¬ sonal 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.
Hobbes took that position ; and while some of his eighteenth-century followers endeavoured to prove that at no epoch of its existence — not even in its most primitive condition — mankind lived in a state of perpetual warfare ; that men have been sociable even in “ the state of nature,” and that want of knowledge, rather than the natural bad inclinations of man, brought humanity to all the horrors of its early historical life, — his idea was, on the contrary, that the so-called “ state of nature ” was nothing but a permanent fight between individuals, accidentally huddled together by the mere caprice of their bestial existence. True, that science has made some progress since Hobbes’s time, and that we have safer ground to stand upon than the speculations of Hobbes or Rousseau. But the Hobbesian philosophy has plenty
78
MUTUAL AID
of admirers still ; and we have had of late quite a school of writers who, taking possession of Darwin’s terminology rather than of his leading ideas, made of it an argument in favour of Hobbes’s views upon primitive man, and even succeeded in giving them a scientific appearance. Huxley, as is known, took the lead of that school, and in a paper written in 1888 he represented primitive men as a sort of tigers or lions, deprived of all ethical conceptions, fighting out the struggle for existence to its bitter end, and living a life of “continual free fight”; to quote his own words — “ beyond the limited and temporary relations of the family, the Hobbesian war of each against all was the normal state of existence.”^
It has been remarked more than once that the chief error of Hobbes, and the eighteenth-century philoso¬ phers as well, was to imagine that mankind began its life in the shape of small straggling families, some¬ thing like the “ limited and temporary ” families of the bigger carnivores, while in reality it is now positively known that such was not the case. Of course, we have no direct evidence as to the modes of life of the first man-like beings. We are not yet settled even as to the time of their first appearance, geologists being inclined at present to see their traces in the pliocene, or even the miocene, deposits of the Tertiary period. But we have the indirect method which per¬ mits us to throw some light even upon that remote antiquity. A most careful investigation into the soeial institutions of the lowest races has been carried on during the last forty years, and it has revealed among the present institutions of primitive folk some traces of still older institutions which have long disap- 1 Nineteenth Century, February 1888, p. 165.
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
79
peared, but nevertheless left unmistakable traces of their previous existence. A whole science devoted to the embryology of human institutions has thus developed in the hands of Bachofen, MacLennan, Morgan, Edward B. Tylor, Maine, Post, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and many others. And that science has established beyond any doubt that mankind did not begin its life in the shape of small isolated families.
Far from being a primitive form of organization, the family is a very late product of human evolution. As far as we can go buck in the palaeo-ethnology of man¬ kind, we find men living in societies — in tribes similar to those of the highest mammals ; and an extremely slow and long evolution was required to bring these societies to the gentile, or clan organization, which, in its turn, had to undergo another, also very long evolution, before the first germs of family, polygamous or monogamous, could appear. Societies, bands, or tribes — not families — were thus the primitive form of organization of mankind and its earliest ancestors. That is what ethnology has come to after its pains¬ taking researches. And in so doing it simply came to what might have been foreseen by the zoologist. None of the higher mammals, save a few carnivores and a few undoubtedly-decaying species of apes (orang-outans and gorillas), live in small families, isolatedly straggling in the woods. All others live in societies. And Darwin so well understood that isolately-living apes never could have developed into man-like beings, that he was inclined to consider man as descended from some comparatively weak but social species, like the chimpanzee, rather than from some stronger but unsociable species, like the gorilla.^
^ The Descent of Man, end of ch. ii. pp. 63 and 64 of the 2nd edition.
8o
MUTUAL AID
Zoology and palaeo-ethnology are thus agreed in con¬ sidering that the band, not the family, was the earliest form of social life. The first human societies simply were a further development of those societies which constitute the very essence of life of the higher animals.^
If we now go over to positive evidence, we see that the earliest traces of man, dating from the glacial or the early post-glacial period, afford unmistakable proofs of man having lived even then in societies. Isolated finds of stone implements, even from the old stone age, are very rare ; on the contrary, wherever one flint implement is discovered others are sure to be found, in most cases in very large quantities. At a time when men were dwelling in caves, or under occasionally protruding rocks, in company with mam¬ mals now extinct, and hardly succeeded in making the roughest sorts of flint hatchets, they already knew the advantages of life in societies. In the valleys of the tributaries of the Dordogne, the surface of the rocks is in some places entirely covered with caves which were inhabited by palaeolithic men.^ Some¬ times the cave-dwellings are superposed in storeys,
^ Anthropologists who fully endorse the above views as regards man nevertheless intimate, sometimes, that the apes live in poly¬ gamous families, under the leadership of “a strong and jealous male.” I do not know how far that assertion is based upon con¬ clusive observation. But the passage from Brehm’s Life of Animals, which is sometimes referred to, can hardly be taken as very con¬ clusive. It occurs in his general description of monkeys ; but his more detailed descriptions of separate species either contradict it or do not confirm it. Even as regards the cercopithbques, Brehm is affirmative in saying that they “nearly always live in bands, and very seldom in families ” (French edition, p. 59). As to other species, the very numbers of their bands, always containing many males, render the “polygamous family” more than doubtful Further observation is evidently wanted.
* Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, fifth edition, 1890.
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
8i
and they certainly recall much more the nesting colonies of swallows than the dens of carnivores. As to the flint implements discovered in those caves, to use Lubbock’s words, “ one may say without exag¬ geration that they are numberless.” The same is true of other palaeolithic stations. It also appears from Lartet’s investigations that the inhabitants of the Aurignac region in the south of France partook of tribal meals at the burial of their dead. So that men lived in societies, and had germs of a tribal worship, even at that extremely remote epoch.
The same is still better proved as regards the later part of the stone age. Traces of neolithic man have been found in numberless quantities, so that we can reconstitute his manner of life to a great extent. When the ice-cap (which must have spread from the Polar regions as far south as middle France, middle Germany, and middle Russia, and covered Canada as well as a good deal of what is now the United States) began to melt away, the surfaces freed from ice were covered, first, with swamps and marshes, and later on with numberless lakes.^ Lakes filled all depressions of the valleys before their waters dug out those permanent channels which, during a subsequent epoch, became our rivers. And wherever we explore, in Europe, Asia, or America, the shores of the literally numberless lakes of that period, whose proper name would be the Lacustrine period, we find traces of neolithic man.
^ That extension of the ice-cap is admitted by most of the geologists who have specially studied the glacial age. The Russian Geological Survey already has taken this view as regards Russia, and most German specialists maintain it as regards Germany. The glaciation of most of the central plateau of France will not fail to be recognized by the French geologists, when they pay more attention to the glacial deposits altogether.
G
82
MUTUAL AID
They are so numerous that we can only wonder at the relative density of population at that time. The “stations” of neolithic man closely follow each other on the terraces which now mark the shores of the old lakes. And at each of those stations stone implements appear in such numbers, that no doubt is possible as to the length of time during which they were inhabited by rather numerous tribes. Whole workshops of flint implements, testifying of the numbers of workers who used to come together, have been discovered by the archaeologists.
Traces of a more advanced period, already char¬ acterized by the use of some pottery, are found in the shell-heaps of Denmark. They appear, as is well known, in the shape of heaps from five to ten feet thick, from loo to 200 feet wide, and 1,000 feet or more in length, and they are so common along some parts of the sea-coast that for a long time they were considered as natural growths. And yet they “ contain nothing but what has been in some way or other subservient to the use of man,” and they are so densely stuffed with products of human industry that, during a two days’ stay at Milgaard, Lubbock dug out no less than 191 pieces of stone-implements and four fragments of pottery.^ The very size and extension of the shell- heaps prove .that for generations and generations the coasts of Denmark were inhabited by hundreds of small tribes which certainly lived as peacefully together as the Fuegian tribes, which also accumulate like shell- heaps, are living in our own times.
As to the lake-dwellings of Switzerland, which represent a still further advance in civilization, they yield still better evidence of life and work in societies.
^ Prehistoric Times, pp. 232 and 242.
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
83
It is known that even during the stone age the shores of the Swiss lakes were dotted with a succession of villages, each of which consisted of several huts, and was built upon a platform supported by numberless pillars in the lake. No less than twenty-four, mostly stone age villages, were discovered along the shores of Lake Leman, thirty-two in the Lake of Constance, forty-six in the Lake of Neuchatel, and so on ; and each of them testifies to the immense amount of labour which was spent in common by the tribe, not by the family. It has even been asserted that the life of the lake-dwellers must have been remarkably free of war¬ fare. And so it probably was, especially if we refer to the life of those primitive folk who live until the present time in similar villages built upon pillars on the sea coasts.
It is thus seen, even from the above rapid hints, that our knowledge of primitive man is not so scanty after all, and that, so far as it goes, it is rather opposed than favourable to the Hobbesian speculations. More¬ over, it may be supplemented, to a great extent, by the direct observation of such primitive tribes as now stand on the same level of civilization as the inhabitants of Europe stood in prehistoric times.
That these primitive tribes which we find now are not degenerated specimens of mankind who formerly knew a higher civilization, as it has occasionally been maintained, has sufficiently been proved by Edward B. Tylor and Lubbock. However, to the arguments already opposed to the degeneration theory, the follow¬ ing may be added. Save a few tribes clustering in the less-accessible highlands, the “savages” represent a girdle which encircles the more or less civilized nations, and they occupy the extremities of our con-
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tinents, most of which have retained still, or recently were bearing, an early post-glacial character. Such are the Eskimos and their congeners in Greenland, Arctic America, and Northern Siberia; and, in the Southern hemisphere, the Australians, the Papiias, the Fuegians, and, partly, the Bushmen ; while within the civilized area, like primitive folk are only found in the Himalayas, the highlands of Australasia, and the plateaus of Brazil. Now it must be borne in mind that the glacial age did not come to an end at once over the whole surface of the earth. It still continues in Greenland. Therefore, at a time when the littoral regions of the Indian Ocean, the Mediterranean, or the Gulf of Mexico already enjoyed a warmer climate, and became the seats of higher civilizations, immense territories in middle Europe, Siberia, and Northern America, as well as in Patagonia, Southern Africa, and Southern Australasia, remained in early post¬ glacial conditions which rendered them inaccessible to the civilized nations of the torrid and sub-torrid zones. They were at that time what the terrible urmans of North-West Siberia are now, and their population, inaccessible to and untouched by civilization, retained the characters of early post-glacial man. Later on, when desiccation rendered these territories more suit¬ able for agriculture, they were peopled with more civilized immigrants ; and while part of their previous inhabitants were assimilated by the new settlers, another part migrated further, and settled where we find them. The territories they inhabit now are still, or recently were, sub-glacial, as to their physical features ; their arts and implements are those of the neolithic age ; and, notwithstanding their racial differences, and the distances which separate them, their modes of life and
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
85
social institutions bear a striking likeness. So we cannot but consider them as fragments of the early post-glacial population of the now civilized area.
The first thing which strikes us as soon as we begin studying primitive folk is the complexity of the organiz¬ ation of marriage relations under which they are living. With most of them the family, in the sense we attribute to it, is hardly found in its germs. But they are by no means loose aggregations of men and women coming in a disorderly manner together in conformity with their momentary caprices. All of them are under a certain organization, which has been described by Morgan in its general aspects as the “gentile,” or clan organization.^
To tell the matter as briefly as possible, there is
1 Bachofen, Das Mutterrecht^ Stuttgart, 1861 ; Lewis H. Morgan, Ancient Society, or Researches in the Lines of Human Progress from Savagery through Barbarism to Civilization, New York, 1877 ; J. F. MacLennan, Studies in Ancient History, ist series, new edition, 1886 ; 2nd series, 1896 ; L. Fison and A. W. Howitt, Kamilaroi and Kurnai, Melbourne. These four writers — as has been very truly remarked by Giraud Teulon, — starting from different facts and different general ideas, and following different methods, have come to the same conclusion. To Bachofen we owe the notion of the maternal family and the maternal succession ; to Morgan — the system of kinship, Malayan and Turanian, and a highly-gifted sketch of the main phases of human evolution ; to MacLennan — the law of exogeny ; and to Fison and Howitt — the cuadro, or scheme, of the conjugal societies in Australia. All four end in establishing the same fact of the tribal origin of the family. When Bachofen first drew attention to the maternal family, in his epoch-making work, and Morgan described the clan-organization, — both concurring to the almost general extension of these forms and maintaining that the marriage laws lie at the very basis of the consecutive steps of human evolution, they were accused of exaggeration. However, the most careful researches prosecuted since, by a phalanx of students of ancient law, have proved that all races of mankind bear traces of having passed through similar stages of development of marriage laws, such as we now see in force among certain savages. See the works of Post, Dargun, Kovalevsky, Lubbock, and their numerous followers : Lippert, Mucke, etc.
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little doubt that mankind has passed at its beginnings through a stage which may be described as that of “communal marriage”; that is, the whole tribe had husbands and wives in common with but little regard to consanguinity. But it is also certain that some restrictions to that free intercourse were imposed at a very early period. Inter-marriage was soon prohibited between the sons of one mother and her sisters, grand¬ daughters, and aunts. Later on it was prohibited between the sons and daughters of the same mother, and further limitations did not fail to follow. The idea of a gens, or clan, which embodied all presumed descendants from one stock (or rather all those who gathered in one group) was evolved, and marriage within the clan was entirely prohibited. It still re¬ mained “ communal,” but the wife or the husband had to be taken from another clan. And when a gens became too numerous, and subdivided into several gentes, each of them was divided into classes (usually four), and marriage was permitted only between certain well-defined classes. That is the stage which we find now among the Kamilaroi-speaking Australians. As to the family, its first germs appeared amidst the clan organization. A woman who was captured in war from some other clan, and who formerly would have belonged to the whole gens, could be kept at a later period by the capturer, under certain obligations to¬ wards the tribe. She may be taken by him to a separate hut, after she had paid a certain tribute to the clan, and thus constitute within the gens a separate family, the appearance of which evidently was opening a quite new phase of civilization.^
Now, if we take into consideration that this com- ^ See Appendix VII.
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
8/
plicated organization developed among men who stood at the lowest known degree of development, and that it maintained itself in societies knowing no kind of authority besides the authority of public opinion, we at once see how deeply inrooted social instincts must have been in human nature, even at its lowest stages. A savage who is capable of living under such an organization, and of freely submitting to rules which continually clash with his personal desires, certainly is not a beast devoid of ethical principles and knowing no rein to its passions. But the fact becomes still more striking if we consider the immense antiquity of the clan organization. It is now known that the primitive Semites, the Greeks of Homer, the pre¬ historic Romans, the Germans of Tacitus, the early Celts and the early Slavonians, all have had their own period of clan organization, closely analogous to that of the Australians, the Red Indians, the Eskimos, and other inhabitants of the “ savage girdle.” ^ So we must admit that either the evolution of marriage laws went on on the same lines among all human races, or the rudiments of the clan rules were developed among some common ancestors of the Semites, the Aryans, the Polynesians, etc., before their differentia¬ tion into separate races took place, and that these rules were maintained, until now, among races long ago separated from the common stock. Both alternatives imply, however, an equally striking tenacity of the
^ For the Semites and the Aryans, see especially Prof. Maxim Kovalevsky’s Primitive Law (yc\ Russian), Moscow, 1886 and 1887. Also his lectures delivered at Stockholm {Tableau des origines ei de I' evolution de la famille et de la propriete., Stockholm, 1890), which represents an admirable review of the whole question. Cf. also A. Post Die Geschlechtsgenossenschaft der Urzeit^ Oldenburg,
'875
88
MUTUAL AID
institution — such a tenacity that no assaults of the individual could break it down through the scores ot thousands of years that it was in existence. The very persistence of the clan organization shows how utterly false it is to represent primitive mankind as a disorderly agglomeration of individuals, who only obey their individual passions, and take advantage of their personal force and cunningness against all other representatives of the species. Unbridled individualism is a modern growth, but it is not characteristic of primitive man¬ kind.^
Going now over to the existing savages, we may begin with the Bushmen, who stand at a very low level of development — so low indeed that they have no dwellings and sleep in holes dug in the soil, occasionally protected by some screens. It is known that when Europeans settled in their territory and destroyed deer, the Bushmen began stealing the settlers’ cattle, whereupon a war of extermination, too horrible to be related here, was waged against them.
^ It would be impossible to enter here into a discussion of the origin of the marriage restrictions. Let me only remark that a division into groups, similar to Morgan’s Hawaian^ exists among birds ; the young broods live together separately from their parents. A like division might probably be traced among some mammals as well. As to the prohibition of relations between brothers and sisters, it is more likely to have arisen, not from speculations about the bad effects of consanguinity, which speculations really do not seem probable, but to avoid the too-easy precocity of like marriages. Under close cohabitation it must have become of imperious necessity. I must also remark that in discussing the origin of new customs altogether, we must keep in mind that the savages, like us, have their “thinkers” and savants — wizards, doctors, prophets, etc. — whose knowledge and ideas are in advance upon those of the masses. United as they are in their secret unions (another almost universal feature) they are certainly capable of exercising a pow^erful influence, and of enforcing customs the utility of which may not yet be recognized by the majority of the tribe,
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
89
Five hundred Bushmen were slaughtered in 1774, three thousand in 1808 and 1809 by the Farmers’ Alliance, and so on. They were poisoned like rats, killed by hunters lying in ambush before the carcass of some animal, killed wherever met with.^ So that our knowledge of the Bushmen, being chiefly borrowed from those same people who exterminated them, is necessarily limited. But still we know that when the Europeans came, the Bushmen lived in small tribes (or clans), sometimes federated together ; that they used to hunt in common, and divided the spoil without quarrelling ; that they never abandoned their wounded, and displayed strong affection to their comrades. Lichtenstein has a most touching story about a Bush¬ man, nearly drowned in a river, who was rescued by his companions. They took off their furs to cover him, and shivered themselves ; they dried him, rubbed him before the fire, and smeared his body with warm grease till they brought him back to life. And when the Bushmen found, in Johan van der Walt, a man who treated them well, they expressed their thankful¬ ness by a most touching attachment to that man.^ Burchell and Moffat both represent them as good- hearted, disinterested, true to their promises, and grateful,® all qualities which could develop only by being practised within the tribe. As to their love to children, it is sufficient to say that when a European wished to secure a Bushman woman as a slave, he
^ Col. Collins, in Philips’ Researches in South Africa, London, 1828. Quoted by Waitz, ii. 334.
^ Lichtenstein’s Reisen im siidlichen Afrika, ii. pp. 92, 97. Berlin, 1811.
^ Waitz, Anthropologic der Naturvolker, ii. pp. 335 seq. See also Fritsch’s Die Eingeboren Afrika' s, Breslau, 1872, pp. 386 ; and
Drei Jahre in Siid-Afrika. Also W. Bleck, A Brief Account of Bushmen Folklore, Capetown, 1875.
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stole her child : the mother was sure to come into slavery to share the fate of her childT
The same social manners characterize the Hotten¬ tots, who are but a little more developed than the Bushmen. Lubbock describes them as “ the filthiest animals,” and filthy they really are. A fur suspended to the neck and worn till it falls to pieces is all their dress ; their huts are a few sticks assembled together and covered with mats, with no kind of furniture within. And though they kept oxen and sheep, and seem to have known the use of iron before they made acquaintance with the Europeans, they still occupy one of the lowest degrees of the human scale. And yet those who knew them highly praised their socia¬ bility and readiness to aid each other. If anything is given to a Hottentot, he at once divides it among all present — -a habit which, as is known, so much struck Darwin among the Fuegians. He cannot eat alone, and, however hungry, he calls those who pass by to share his food. And when Kolben expressed his astonishment thereat, he received the answer: “That is Hottentot manner.” But this is not Hottentot manner only : it is an all but universal habit among the “savages.” Kolben, who knew the Hottentots well and did not pass by their defects in silence, could not praise their tribal morality highly enough.
“ Their word is sacred,” he wrote. They know “ nothing of the corruptness and faithless arts of Europe.” “ They live in great tranquillity and are seldom at war with their neigh¬ bours.” They are “ all kindness and goodwill to one another. . . . One of the greatest pleasures of the Hottentots certainly lies in their gifts and good offices to one another.” “ The integrity of the Hottentots, their strictness and celerity in the
1 Elis^e Reclus, Geographie Universeile, xiii. 475.
MUTUAL AID AMONG SAVAGES
91
exercise of justice, and their chastity, are things in which they excel all or most nations in the world. ’’ ^
Tachart, Barrow, and Moodie ^ fully confirm Kolben’s testimony. Let me only remark that when Kolben wrote that “ they are certainly the most friendly, the most liberal and the most benevolent people to one another that ever appeared on the earth ” (i. 332), he wrote a sentence which has continually appeared since in the description of savages. When first meeting with primitive races, the Europeans usually make a caricature of their life ; but when an intelligent man has stayed among them for a longer time, he generally describes them as the “ kindest ” or “ the gentlest ” race on the earth. These very same words have been applied to the Ostyaks, the Samo- yedes, the Eskimos, the Dayaks, the Aleoutes, the Papuas, and so on, by the highest authorities. I also remember having read them applied to the Tunguses, the Tchuktchis, the Sioux, and several others. The very frequency of that high commendation already speaks volumes in itself.
The natives of Australia do not stand on a higher level of development than their South African brothers. Their huts are of the same character ; very often simple screens are the only protection against cold winds. In their food they are most indifferent : they devour horribly putrefied corpses, and cannibalism is resorted to in times of scarcity. When first discovered by Europeans, they had no implements but in stone or bone, and these were of the roughest description.
^ P. Kolben, The Present State of the Cape of Good Hope, trans¬ lated from the German by Mr. Medley, London, 1731, vol. i. pp.