31 lines
1.6 KiB
ReStructuredText
31 lines
1.6 KiB
ReStructuredText
---
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title: "Mutual Aid: A Factor Of Evolution"
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author: Pyotr Kropotkin
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tags: jfdi
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---
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Each time, however, that an attempt to return to this old principle was made,
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it's fundamental idea itself was widened. From the clan it was extended to the
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stem, to the federation of stems, to the nation, and finally—in ideal, at
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least—to the whole of mankind. It was also refined at the same time. In
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primitive Buddhism, in primitive Christianity, in the writings of some of the
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Mussulman teachers, in the early movements of the Reform, and especially in the
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ethical and philosophical movements of the last century and of our own times,
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the total abandonment of the idea of revenge, or of “due reward”—of good for
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good and evil for evil—is affirmed more and more vigorously. The higher
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conception of “no revenge for wrongs,” and of freely giving more than one
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expects to receive from his neighbours, is proclaimed as being the real
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principle of morality—a principle superior to mere equivalence, equity, or
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justice, and more conducive to happiness. And man is appealed to to be guided
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in his acts, not merely by love, which is always personal, or at the best
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tribal, but by the perception of his oneness with each human being.
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In the practice of mutual aid, which we can retrace to the earliest
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beginnings of evolution, we thus find the positive and undoubted origin of
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our ethical conceptions;
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and we can affirm that in the ethical progress of man, mutual support not
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mutual struggle—has had the leading part. In its wide extension, even at the
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present time, we also see the best guarantee of a still loftier evolution of
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our species.
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