Darwin at 200

Harry recommends a couple of new books on Darwin that were reviewed in the New York Times, including Darwin’s Sacred Cause by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear Darwin’s 200th birthday will be the occasion of some ideas about him that clearly deserve to be left in the dust of evolution. This may be one.

Adrian Desmond and James Moore’s argument in their new book, “Darwin’s Sacred Cause,” is bluntly stated in its subtitle: “How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin’s Views on Human Evolution.” They set out to overturn the widespread view that Darwin was a “tough-minded scientist” who unflinchingly followed the trail of empirical research until it led to the stunning and unavoidable theory of evolution. This narrative, they claim, is precisely backward. “Darwin’s starting point,” they write, “was the abolitionist belief in blood kinship, a ‘common descent’ ” of all human beings.

I hate to disagree with scholars, but it seems to me that Darwin’s revulsion at slavery was at least as much colored by his place in society as by his moral objections.

We forget because slavery lasted another 30 years in America, but by the time the Beagle sailed in 1831, abolition was an accepted fact in Britain. Darwin, as an enlightened gentleman certainly subscribed to the idea. Slaves were emancipated by Act of the British Parliament in 1834. William Wilberforce’s Slave Trade Act 1807 abolished the trade in the British Empire, and the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 abolished it per se.

Darwin may have hated slavery personally, or he may have been reflecting the spirit of his times, but he reflected in full measure his society’s prejudices against other races. I addressed that issue in my blog on Oct. 23:

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.”