by VorJack
It’s a truism that history is done to serve the interests of the present, so it’s not surprising that we look back on Charles Darwin as the major player in the faith vs. reason debate. However, in doing so we ignore the arguments that concerned Darwin himself most of all. In Darwin’s Sacred Cause, Adrian Desmond & James Moore reconstruct the debates over race and slavery which preoccupied Victorian England, and show how Darwin’s science was influenced by his abolitionist beliefs.
Am I Not A Man And A Brother?
Pullquote: Go proud reasoner, and call the worm thy sister!
Darwin was born two years after the slave trade was abolished in England, thanks in some part to his famous grandfathers, Josiah Wedgwood and Erasmus Darwin. Darwin was raised in a fiercely abolitionist family, cutting his teeth on abolitionist tracts and his grandfather Darwin’s excessive poetry. His grandfather Wedgwood bankrolled some of the abolitionist efforts and provided the famous family seal: Am I not a man and a brother? From birth, Darwin was surrounded by a cast of assertive sisters and female cousins who would descend upon him were he to set a foot off the abolitionist course.
But the world that Darwin was entering was changing. Britain was developing a race consciousness, as shown by Sir Walter Scott’s romantic epics of Anglo-Saxon history. What we now call “scientific racism” was developing alongside the subversive sciences of phrenology and crainiology. Samuel Morton was measuring brain size in his skull-strewn lab — called the “American Golgotha” by both friends and enemies — in order to rank the various races by brain power. Any question who ended up on top?
But the central argument which vexed Darwin was advanced by the British slave-holding planter class; that African slaves actually belonged to a difference species than their owners. As this argument developed it took hold amongst naturalists like Morton, Josiah Nott and Darwin’s famous opponent Louis Agassiz. This group eventually took the name “polygenists,” since they believed that mankind began as a number of different species. To the question on the Darwin family seal, the polygenists answered flatly, “No.”
The Mutability of Species
Pullquote: “… plurality of species in the human race does no more violence to the bible, than do the admitted facts of Astronomy and Geology.”
Desmond & Moore do an excellent job of showing the complexity of the argument. Christians war with Christians over interpretations of Genesis: does it support the plurality of human species? Competing naturalists study dogs and farm animals to discover just how mutable the species could be, all attempting to show how Africans could — or could not — be related to Anglo-Saxons. The potential fertility of hybrids and crossbreeds was hotly debated.
Darwin’s entry into this debate was on the issue of the mutability of the species. Some naturalists maintained that a species could only shift a certain amount. A few went so far as to suggest that all breeds of dog were descent from different species of canine (wolf, dingo, coyote, etc.). So Darwin hoped to show that natural selection, and particularly sexual selection, could account for the extreme divergence of species. Thus he could show how hominids of such apparent differences could come from the same stock.
This is Desmond & Moore’s thesis, and it’s a rough case to make at times. Darwin’s timidity is legendary, and he was not constitutionally suited for the life of a crusading abolitionist or scientist. Instead, we find Darwin’s passion showing through at odd moments. One of the most telling is his reaction to his mentor Charles Lyell, who soft pedaled the reality of American slavery in his Travels in North America. Darwin is coldly polite in his correspondence, but draws Lyell’s attention to his own, yet to be completed, Journal of Researches. There, five hundred pages in, Lyell would discover an account of Darwin’s experiences with slavery on his Beagle voyage, including the following:
“Those who look tenderly at the slave-owner, and with a cold heart at the slave, never seem to put themselves into the position of the latter;—what a cheerless prospect, with not even a hope of change! Picture to yourself the chance, ever hanging over you, of your wife and your little children—those objects which nature urges even the slave to call his own—being torn from you and sold like beasts to the first bidder! And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth!” (p. 499-500)
Years later, the fire-breathing abolitionist William Lloyd Garrsion would hear Darwin’s full broadside, read to him by his son. The fact that we find a late life correspondence between these two men tells us much about Darwin.
Breadth and Depth
Since Darwin was reluctant to wear his heart on his sleeve, Desmond & Moore dig deep into the archives. The work heavily with Darwin’s correspondence, both personal and professional. They pay close attention to aspects of his life that are usually glossed over, like his year studying in Edinburgh for his aborted career as a doctor. Desmond and Moore show the intellectual currents that swirled around him, yet still find time to consider his relationship with the African man who taught the young Darwin the art of taxidermy.
This is history the way I like it: rich in detail yet sweeping in scope. You explore Darwin’s personal convictions, and on the way you seem to meet everyone of interest in the early Victorian period. Darwin emerges as neither a scientific saint nor a amoral anti-christ, but a man finding a unique way to fight his family’s war: the fight for universal brotherhood.
Vorjack is a librarian/archivist and a public historian, living with his wife in history-soaked Albany, New York.
Jabster: “I see a lot of things science has produced for our benefit. Religion hasn’t given us anything to compare.”... 
Brian: the first time I see a monk levitate up to the moon I’ll start giving religion a little more respect. Theologians... 
23 Comments
Darwin’s personal ideas have nothing to do with science.
Scientific ideas live and die on their own merit, regardless of how much we approve or not their originator as a person.
Question.
On what moral/ethical/philosophical (ie: not practical) grounds being racist (“I can kill/enslave this guy because we’re superior”) is not acceptable while being specist (“I can kill/enslave/eat this non-human animal because we’re superior”) is?
Can an argument support specism and yet not being extended to racism or nazi-style eugenics?
Gotta eat.
So is it ok to kill other humans if you eat them?
by that logic, all lions should immediately be imprisoned as mass murderers.
A friend of mine said she wouldn’t eat anything she might sleep with; the fact that this was in a discussion over whether or not we’d eat monkey meat will, I am sure, result in teasing in future.
I prefer the sapience test; if it is aware of itself in a demonstrable way, killing it is murder. Assumptions can be made for cetaceans, parrots and apes that they have at least some degree of sapience. Then you have to factor in whether it’s too rare for you to be killing it just for a barbecue… but mostly you have to remember that we are omnivores, and so eating meat is as natural for us as it is for, say, a dog, and certainly a lot more natural than for duiker (which have been seen eating frogs despite being ostensibly herbivorous).
In any case, species is a different level of separation from race. Races are largely social constructs; there are more differences between some tribes in Africa (purportedly all of the same race) than there are between Asians, Caucasians and Native Americans, or between all of those taken as one group and some groups in Africa. Species, on the other hand, implies at minimum enough genetic difference to make interbreeding biologically difficult or impossible. If there were enough difference between races to justify a comparison to, for example, harnessing a horse, there would be no need for miscegenation laws in apartheid states.
Ivory tower morality. We need to be species-centric; who else will take our needs into consideration? Human beings are still animals, and just like so many other animals we obtain sustenance for other animals.
It would also be illogical to eat our own kind since it would greatly increase our chances of getting a number diseases.
You’re applying morality, a human construct used for social facilitation, to other beasts. When considering racism in this context it’s an extremely unreasonable proposition since 1. there’s no such thing as race with human beings, only clines, or gradients; 2. Society, or some social group, has access to whatever abilities and resources he has available.
Barring some generally consistent principles across populations, morality is subjective and arbitrary, so arguing on that point gets extremely complicated and usually pointless. Because of the decadent lifestyles we’ve become so accustomed to, we become ignorant of the world and develop absurd notions of how it works.
tl;dr
Successful troll is successful
Quite arrogant of you to label troll.
But I’m genuinely curious.
And please, I know that there are plenty of practical reasons to distinguish between humans and non-humans.
In fact, I asked philosophical/moral/ethical arguments, not practical ones.
Unless you tell me that our sense of morality is completely and totally utilitarian (I may agree), but then it’s stupid to play the moral card when it comes to racism.
Forgot the image
Successful Troll is Successful
and I failed the HTML
You forgot the image
Successful Troll is Successful
Demosthenes should have replied to me, instead replied to you… hope it remains understandable…
Why are you guys assuming that I know what’s right and what’s wrong?
I do eat meat.
The only point I want to make is that it’s very easy to draw a line and feel superior.
Species are just another level of separation, life is a continuum.
What happens is a human being, for illness or disease can’t pass your test?
Can we kill him?
So, you’re already making exceptions for the fuzzy cute animals, even when your test is not so applicable.
What about an octopus or a stomatopod?
Both are intelligent and regularly eaten.
Ok, maybe this is becoming pointless.
Silly and illogical response.
@fftysmthg: at least do us the favor of giving a more sustained response than these shotgun one-liners.
Why?
a) Others have written better thought-out responses. While you may disagree with them, at least they have given people something to chew on. A courteous thing is to respond in kind.
b) The persistent use of one-liners tends to indicate “troll.” And a dogged resistance to writing a sustained response screams troll.
Doner party, for one and a half.
Couple of slight points
1. It is Wedgwood not Wedgewood (some branches of the family use the latter spelling but not the pottery family).
2. Am I not a man and a brother is not the family seal. It was developed by the Society for Effecting the Abolition of the Slave Trade and mass produced as a medallion by Josiah Wedgwood and widely worn by those supporting abolition in both the US and Britain.
1. Gotcha. I actually worked with a woman who married into the Wedgewoods, so I assumed that her spelling was correct.
2. The seal was heavily associated with the Darwin family, to the point where you now rarely see it without reference to Josiah Wedgwood & Darwin. Supposedly Josiah developed it, and as you said his ceramics factory mass produced it. I accept that it is not the official family seal, but it has become a de facto seal of the family.
Well heavily associated I agree but I’m not sure it would be called the family seal which implies exclusion of other uses; the seal was for the cause not the family. The Portland Vase which is used as the company icon might better fit the role of a family emblem. Admittedly my only connection is that my grandmother was a Wedgwood; other people may have other ideas.
Wedgewood is an alternative spelling used by some branches of the family (all Wedgwoods/Wedgewoods are apparently descended from a common ancestor in the Middle Ages with that name) most notably the Wedgewood stove makers in the US.
Good, interesting article, from a public historian yet. Thanks!
“And these deeds are done and palliated by men, who profess to love their neighbours as themselves, who believe in God, and pray that his Will be done on earth!” (p. 499-500)’
Wow. I have a renewed appreciation of Darwin.
oh, yah. Go read some of his stuff for yourself, including his journals from the Beagle. He had a pretty good habit of being right about stuff, based on the evidence he had at the time…
of course, as a New Zealander, I take exception at his description of the stop over here, though to be fair, at that point Kororareka was called ‘The Hell-Hole of the Pacific’…
his writing is also quite clear… he can sometimes get overly pedantic, and he had a truly Victorian love of commas, but some parts of his writing are really pure poetry, particularly the last paragraph of the Origin.
“his writing is also quite clear”
Well, as long as you’re not reading his manuscript material. Apparently his handwriting was absolutely horrid.
That’s part of why it was such a shame to lose Stephen Jay Gould. He was one of the handful of living scholars who could work through the original writings and interpret Darwin’s scrawl.
http://evolution-textbook.org/content/free/figures/27_EVOW_Art/00_EVOW_CH27.pdf
Being a woman who married into the Wedgwood family (to a man descended from Josiah the china maker), I just know what I’ve heard from family. The America Wedgewood stove was first produced in 1910, about 120 years or so after Wedgwood china was produced at Barlaston .in England. That gives us a timeline sort of. Any familial connections earlier were assumed to be lost in history. The Wedgwood family did start in England; I have genealogical records dating back to at least the 14th century ( An earlier spelling before that was Wegewood , so I suppose anything might have happened with variant spellings. ) We thought the extra “e” had been added to Wedgwood for the stoves, to get around copyright problems with the use of the by-then famous name.