Mutual Aid: A Factor of EvolutionKropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Science
Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution
Kropotkin, Petr Alekseevich, kniaz
Cooperation; Social groups; Social institutions
woman it is a shame not to know sewing, dancing and all kinds of woman's
work; to pet her husband and children, or even to speak to her husband
in the presence of a stranger.(32)
Such is Aleoute morality, which might also be further illustrated by
their tales and legends. Let me also add that when Veniaminoff wrote (in
1840) one murder only had been committed since the last century in a
population of 60,000 people, and that among 1,800 Aleoutes not one
single common law offence had been known for forty years. This will not
seem strange if we remark that scolding, scorning, and the use of rough
words are absolutely unknown in Aleoute life. Even their children never
fight, and never abuse each other in words. All they may say is, "Your
mother does not know sewing," or "Your father is blind of one eye."(33)
Many features of savage life remain, however, a puzzle to Europeans. The
high development of tribal solidarity and the good feelings with which
primitive folk are animated towards each other, could be illustrated by
any amount of reliable testimony. And yet it is not the less certain
that those same savages practise infanticide; that in some cases they
abandon their old people, and that they blindly obey the rules of
blood-revenge. We must then explain the coexistence of facts which, to
the European mind, seem so contradictory at the first sight. I have just
mentioned how the Aleoute father starves for days and weeks, and gives
everything eatable to his child; and how the Bushman mother becomes a
slave to follow her child; and I might fill pages with illustrations of
the really tender relations existing among the savages and their
children. Travellers continually mention them incidentally. Here you
read about the fond love of a mother; there you see a father wildly
running through the forest and carrying upon his shoulders his child
bitten by a snake; or a missionary tells you the despair of the parents
at the loss of a child whom he had saved, a few years before, from being
immolated at its birth, you learn that the "savage" mothers usually
nurse their children till the age of four, and that, in the New
Hebrides, on the loss of a specially beloved child, its mother, or aunt,
will kill herself to take care of it in the other world.(34) And so on.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account