Social Darwinism

There’s a great deal to be said for reading Charles Darwin’s The Voyage of the Beagle. It’s a captivating travelogue, occasionally an adventure story and a chronicle of times past. Of course, it’s most remarkable for Darwin’s insights into the geology and biology of regions he is seeing for the first time and which he is often able to read in ways that others of his time could not, and that most educated people today could not. How many of us take time from our travels to collect every insect that lives in a new place? How many of us even know enough biology recognize what might be interesting? Darwin, at age 25-30 knew more about the world than most of us ever will as long as we live. Plus he had the ability to reject the common wisdom of the wise men of his age.

All of that becomes even more remarkable when you realize that Darwin was profoundly conservative and Anglo-centric in his social awareness. “To hoist the British flag," he wrote, "seems to draw with it as a certain consequence, wealth, prosperity and civilization.” Time and again he judges the natives harshly from the narrow viewpoint of an English gentleman. The Fuegans, the Maori, even the Tahitians are described by Darwin in almost subhuman terms born of racial prejudice and social arrogance. Of the Fuegans (natives of Tierra del Fuego) he wrote: "These poor wretches were stunted in their growth, their hideous faces bedaubed with white paint, their skin filthy and greasy, their hair entangled, their voices discordant and their gestures violent. Viewing such men, one can hardly make one’s self believe that they are fellow creatures and inhabitants of the same world.” Ironically, many of his harshest judgments are rendered from the certainty of his Christian faith. Ironic because, of course, the more curious and adventurous part of Darwin’s mind eventually led him to doubt, and many would say reject his Christian upbringing.