9 December: Boreham on Peter Kropotkin

The Apostle of Mutual Aid
Shakespeare declares that each man in his turn plays many parts, but it is safe to say that few men have shone in so many roles as did Peter Kropotkin, whose birthday this is. Aristocrat, soldier, courtier, reformer, scientist, traveller, musician, poet, author, and metaphysician, he sometimes adorned the courtrooms of palaces and sometimes languished in the most loathsome gaols; but he was everywhere, and always, the perfect gentleman, radiating the vigour and the charm of a singularly magnetic and engaging personality.

It was his outstanding distinction to add a valuable footnote to Darwin's theory of the struggle for life. Kropotkin agreed with Darwin that Nature makes progress by ordaining that the weak shall go to the wall whilst the strangest and most fit shall survive and perpetuate the species. But Kropotkin held that this doctrine, in itself, sets needlessly harsh interpretation on the phenomena of the universe.

Is Nature as ruthless and as brutal as the Darwinian teaching suggests? Viewed superficially, there are only two creatures in the world—the wolf and the lamb, the beast of prey and its defenceless victim. But, if this hypothesis covered the entire ground, the gentler creatures would quickly vanish. In his "In Memoriam," Tennyson says that Nature is red in tooth and claw; whilst in "Maud," he tells us that:

Nature is one with rapine, a harm no preacher can heal;
The may-fly is torn by the swallow,
the sparrow speared by the shrike,
And the whole little wood where I sit
Is a world of plunder and prey.

But if this is the truth and the whole truth, how is it that, in the age-long struggle for existence, the gentler creatures are invariably triumphant?

The Sparrow Conquers The Shrike
The contest between the gazelle and the hyena seems a most unequal one; yet the fact is that whilst the gazelle multiplies prodigiously, zoologists are seriously concerned about the future of the hyena. On the American prairies, the buffalo and the beaver subsisted side by side with the bear; yet it is the bear that has always been in imminent danger of extinction.

On the Siberian steppes, where the antelope and the wolf lived as neighbours, antelopes grew more and more numerous whilst wolves became fewer and fewer. The same holds true of the deer and the lions on the African veldt and of the rabbits and the weasels in the English meadows. Tennyson says that the sparrow is speared by the shrike, yet in spite of that uncomfortable circumstance, sparrows are everywhere whilst shrikes are seldom seen.

Kropotkin attributed all this to the genius that the gentler creatures display for social intercourse and practical cooperation. A sparrow, seeing a feast, will, before pouncing upon the spoil, fly off to inform his fellows. Lapwings, attacking in mass formation, can drive off an eagle. Wagtails will overwhelm a hawk, and swallows a falcon. Wild horses and zebras, threatened by a powerful carnivore, will mob together, and, if the enemy dares approach, will swiftly trample him to pulp beneath their hoofs.

Prince Kropotkin has many pages of such colourful illustrations. Men like H. W. Bates, whom Darwin described as one of the most intelligent observers whom he had ever met, recognised at once that the Darwinian doctrine was incomplete without this vital supplementation. He begged Kropotkin to publish his conclusions; and, when they appeared, it was immediately recognised that, by establishing his principle of mutual aid, Kropotkin had contributed an invaluable corollary to Darwin's conception of the struggle for existence.

Putting A Theory To The Test
Kropotkin was a great humanitarian and therefore a great reformer. He was never so happy as when fighting for conditions that would ameliorate the lot of his fellow-men. The warrior instinct was in his blood. One of the most characteristic passages in his autobiography tells of his first voyage to England. A terrific storm was raging, but it merely filled him with delight. He was in the seventh heaven. "I enjoyed the struggle of our steamer," he says. "I loved to watch the furiously rolling waves, and sat for hours in the bows, the foam dashing in my face. Every fibre of my inner self seemed to be throbbing with life: I absorbed to the full, the mad intensity of the gale."

A man of such a temper could scarcely live in the Russia of his time without getting into serious trouble. He was not eager to fight for the sheer sake of fighting; but, seeing tyranny and depression on every hand, he felt bound by his conscience to espouse the cause of the downtrodden and neglected; and such a procedure swiftly involved him in as much trouble as any man need desire.

Escaping to England, he settled in London under an assumed name in order that his future activities might not be prejudiced by his bitter experiences in his own land. But this only involved him in fresh embarrassments. Applying for journalistic work, he was handed a parcel of books to review. On opening the package he discovered that the volumes were translations of his own writings. "What can I do?" he asked himself. "I cannot praise them, for I wrote them: I cannot censure them, for they express my most cherished convictions!"

He made a clean breast of it; the editor admired his honesty; he quickly won the confidence of the literary pontiffs of the period and was enthroned as one of the most popular and influential figures in the metropolis. A lovable but practical dreamer, Kropotkin died in 1921, bequeathing to men the memory of one who saw life whole and whose one passionate ideal was to make the world a happier place for all his contemporaries and for all his successors.

F W Boreham

Image: Peter Kropotkin