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. 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. He added to it a touch of Malthusian thinking, and then proceeded to give Darwin's ideas their most comprehensive misapplication.