Page:The Spirit of Russia by T G Masaryk, volume 2.pdf/408

382 but his outlook is not amoralist either in the sense of Marx-Engels or in that of Nietzsche. Like Bakunin, Kropotkin wishes to found a new ethic. For Kropotkin, that is good which is useful to society, and that is bad which is harmful to society. He troubles himself little to enquire whether this definition is adequate, just as he fails to formulate with precision the concept "society." Without further ado, he identifies that concept with the concept "race," and he uses the term "humanity" with the same signification. An opponent of Bentham and the other utilitarians, Kropotkin himself is unable to get beyond the utilitarian foundation of his ethic. He is a rationalist utilitarian, a disciple of the English utilitarians of the eighteenth century. He goes back, above all, to Adam Smith, teaching that men are endowed with natural sympathy, which suffices as a principle of morality. This natural sympathy is simultaneously a sense that we are all members of one another, and that consequently the sound organisation of society is a spontaneous product. Kropotkin discerns this social sense of mutual dependence among the lower animals also, and he therefore considers the formation of societies to be a natural law. Mutual aid is a natural law for beast as well as for man. The struggle for existence, the class struggle, are not the only laws of nature and society.

Kropotkin terms this natural social order, mutualism. In this matter Kropotkin dissents, not only from Darwin, but also from Spencer, for whereas Spencer had taught that the great progress of future society would be realised by effecting a coincidence between the happiness of the individual and the happiness of the community, Kropotkin contends that there has not from the first been any conflict between the interest of the individual and that of the community; there has always been a harmony of interests, for had it not been so the human race would never have been able to maintain itself, and no animal species would have been able to attain to its present level of development. Kropotkin forestalls possible objections to this idea of preestablished harmony by admitting that alike among men and among animals there have always existed numerous individuals unable to comprehend such harmony and mutuality. But the failure, he says, is due merely to a lack of understanding, to narrowness and stupidity; and there have always been individuals able to