Note 32 — Chapter IV · ORGANIC ANALYSIS OF REPRESSION AND OF THE FACTOR OF RESISTANCE FROM THE SOCIETAL VIEWPOINT

One may find the objective evidence of this statement amply set forth in P. Kropotkin’s Mutual Aid, a Factor of Evolution. Here Kropotkin traces in a very conclusive way the presence of the societal instinct in the lower animals and in primitive man. Kropotkin errs, however, when he reaches the levels of development expressed in the social organizations of man. For he fails to discriminate between the instinct of societal solidarity that is the natural cohesion of a species and the quite premeditated and ulterior expressions of social accord represented in the mutual self-interests of man’s collective adaptations.