Mutual Aid | Page 4

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, 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
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 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