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Cruelty and Kindness: A New Look at Aggression and Altruism


Harvey A Hornstein

The conclusions of scientists such as Konrad Lorenz, psychological investigators such as Sigmund Freud and Anthony Storr, and popularizers of science such as Robert Ardrey and Desmond Morris are part of a philosophical tradition which can be traced back at least three centuries to Thomas Hobbes. A pessimist, Hobbes was so overwhelmed by what he believed to be man's uncontrollable instinctive urges that he described the natural state of mankind as "war of all against all". Variants of Hobbes's rather dismal world view can be found in the thinking of the nineteenth-century social philosophers such as Max Stirner and Friedrich Nietzsche. Both men proclaimed that each human being struggles for his own good, without reference to the well-being of other members of society. To exist is to struggle. There are no options. Altruism is an illusion. It is a temporary, superficial condition which exists only when people are faced by a common enemy. Bonds between men are based on common fear of common hatreds, not on love or fellowship. The struggle's roots are deep in man's past and its result is the survival of the fittest.

Superficially, the relationship between this account of social life and Darwin's analysis of evolution seems unmistakable. During roughly the same period that Stirner and Nietzsche were labouring, a sociologist, Herbert Spencer, also observed this on-the-surface similarity. He added to it a touch of Malthusian thinking, and then proceeded to give Darwin's ideas their most comprehensive misapplication.

Spencer's account of human existence is called Social Darwinism. Since the late 1800's, he and his followers have been arguing that the same principles which apply to the evolution and development of biological pneumonia also apply to events in social life. Thus, competition between fellows is the law of life. The strongest and best survive: all the rest serve the stronger or suffer extinction. Every man is an island, each alone, pitted against his fellows in a struggle for existence. Competition, conflict, exploitation, and war are all inevitable. Moreover, they are desirable because they allow only the fittest to survive.

Although it may be unfair to hold Spencer responsible, this general theme can be found in the writings of several contemporary authors cum philosophers, most notably Ayn Rand. One of her major complaints seems to be that societal arrangements frequently disrupt natural processes, causing some of the fit to fail and some of the unfit to survive, and even prevail. For Ms. Rand, Robin Hood was not a hero who stole from the rich and gave to the poor; he was a scoundrel who interfered with the natural course of society's evolution.

Poor Darwin, he probably never dreamed that, indirectly, his ideas would be used to attack children's heroes. In fact, they should not be. He never accepted many of the conclusions which are now being attributed to him. If one's reading of Darwin is limited to "The Origin of the Species", however, misinterpretation of this sort is understandable. Nevertheless, some additional effort at the library should help clarify any misconceptions. In 1871, Darwin published "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex", where he wrote, "As man advances in civilization and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instinct and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him." This is not mere prescription. Repeatedly, throughout the book, Darwin says that in nature and in human social life, co-operation and a benevolent linkage between fellows is essential for survival.

In 1872, Darwin published "The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals", in which he continued this argument, saying that natural selection favours the preservation of altruistic feeling, mutual aid, group loyalty and co-operativeness...

This position was echoed by a number of Darwin's contemporaries, including Prince Peter Kropotkin and anthropologist Alfred Russell Wallace, who independently formulated modern evolutionary theory contemporaneously with Darwin. Kropotkin's views are evident in the title of his classic investigation of human evolution, "Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution", and Wallace stated his on March 1, 1864, in a speech delivered to the London Anthropological Society:

In proportion to physical characteristics becoming of less importance, mental and moral qualities will have increasing importance to the well-being of a race. Capacity for acting in concert, for the protection of food and shelter; sympathy, which leads all in turn to assist each other; the sense of right which checks depredation ... are all qualities that from earliest appearance must have been for the benefit of each community, and would therefore become objects of natural selection.

These echoes from Darwin's time were still resounding one century later when a noted scholar, Sir Wilfred Le Gros Clark, said,

Consciously directed co-operativeness has been the major factor which has determined the evolutionary origin of Homo Sapiens as a new emergent species and the gradual development of the peculiarly human form of integrated society. It demanded an accelerated development of those parts of the brain whereby the emotional and instinctual impulses can be more effectively subordinated to the good of the community as a whole. Our task is to give full expression to the deep-rooted altruism which is an essential attribute of the humanity of man.

I believe that Spencer and the friends and supporters of Social Darwinism are wrong. Egoism rooted in aggressive instinct is not the rule of human life. Humans are not limited to saying, "I, 'ego', am my exclusive concern; 'we', 'you', and 'altruism', are shams, facades designed by the crafty and unwise to mask the ultimate truth: That all life is an individual struggle for existence, and maintaining me can be the only motive for action." I believe that self-love is not sovereign and human beings are not forever selfish, competitive and aggressive. If here is a struggle for life, then I believe that it is often a struggle on the behalf of another's life.

To these biases of mine add just a few more: I believe that a final refutation of scholars such as Lorenz and Freud cannot be based simply on humanistic, philosophical or religious commitments. And I do not believe that scholarly conclusions are refuted simply because one disapproves of their social and political implications. Data are needed - data collected in scientifically controlled experiments with human beings, data which can be used to create a new perspective for examining the literature on animal behaviour. That is the content of this book.

Reprinted with permission from Chapter One of Harvey A. Hornstein's book, Cruelty and Kindness - A New Look at Aggression and Altruism, Prentice Hall, Inc. ISBN 0-13-194910-1. This book is part of the Patterns of Social Behaviour Series edited by Zick Rubin.
Harvey Hornstein, Professor of Psychology and Education at Teachers College, Columbia University is a senior staff member of the Centre for Research Policy. A frequent contributor of research articles to professional journals, he has also co-edited Social Intervention, The Technology of Organization Development, and Applications of Social Psychology.