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
the abandonment of the parents and infanticide. But if these same
Europeans were to tell a savage that people, extremely amiable, fond of
their own children, and so impressionable that they cry when they see a
misfortune simulated on the stage, are living in Europe within a stone's
throw from dens in which children die from sheer want of food, the
savage, too, would not understand them. I remember how vainly I tried to
make some of my Tungus friends understand our civilization of
individualism: they could not, and they resorted to the most fantastical
suggestions. The fact is that a savage, brought up in ideas of a tribal
solidarity in everything for bad and for good, is as incapable of
understanding a "moral" European, who knows nothing of that solidarity,
as the average European is incapable of understanding the savage. But if
our scientist had lived amidst a half-starving tribe which does not
possess among them all one man's food for so much as a few days to come,
he probably might have understood their motives. So also the savage, if
he had stayed among us, and received our education, may be, would
understand our European indifference towards our neighbours, and our
Royal Commissions for the prevention of "babyfarming." "Stone houses
make stony hearts," the Russian peasants say. But he ought to live in a
stone house first.
Similar remarks must be made as regards cannibalism. Taking into account
all the facts which were brought to light during a recent controversy on
this subject at the Paris Anthropological Society, and many incidental
remarks scattered throughout the "savage" literature, we are bound to
recognize that that practice was brought into existence by sheer
necessity. But that it was further developed by superstition and
religion into the proportions it attained in Fiji or in Mexico. It is a
fact that until this day many savages are compelled to devour corpses in
the most advanced state of putrefaction, and that in cases of absolute
scarcity some of them have had to disinter and to feed upon human
corpses, even during an epidemic. These are ascertained facts. But if we
now transport ourselves to the conditions which man had to face during
the glacial period, in a damp and cold climate, with but little
vegetable food at his disposal; if we take into account the terrible
ravages which scurvy still makes among underfed natives, and remember
that meat and fresh blood are the only restoratives which they know, we
must admit that man, who formerly was a granivorous animal, became a
flesh-eater during the glacial period. He found plenty of deer at that
time, but deer often migrate in the Arctic regions, and sometimes they
entirely abandon a territory for a number of years. In such cases his
last resources disappeared. During like hard trials, cannibalism has
been resorted to even by Europeans, and it was resorted to by the
savages. Until the present time, they occasionally devour the corpses of
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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