Wednesday, June 26, 2013

Charles Darwin, Leonard Darwin and Schallmeyer And a Note About George Darwin

Postscript as Preface

Before reposting what I wrote last year I will answer what someone said a number of months ago, that when he wrote his 1939 piece around which this part of the case is based, Leonard Darwin was a very old man and so, according to the implication of the comment, unreliable.  The person making that claim gave no factual refutation of what Leonard Darwin said or of what I said, so the evidence that he was ga-ga rested only on his age.  I'm not surprised that claim is being resorted to.  When I wrote my first piece about The Descent of Man five years ago one of Darwin's defenders said he was an old man when he wrote it.  He was 62 at the time and no one I'm aware of claimed that Charles Darwin was past it then or during the rest of his life.

Leonard Darwin had been talking about his father's eugenics beliefs for far longer than that.  Last year I mentioned the dedication to his father of his book, The Need for Eugenic Reform, in 1926.  In his dedication he does what no one is more qualified to have done, attribute his eugenics beliefs to Charles Darwin.  "For if I had not believed that he would have wished me to give such help as I could toward making his life's work of service to mankind, I should never have been led to write this book.”  He was 76 the year he wrote that.  In that he directly states that eugenics was the practical application of Charles Darwin's "life's work" and that he fully believed his own father would have seen his eugenics activism as making Charles Darwin's work "of service to mankind".  No doubt all of the eugenicists saw their work as a "service to mankind" no matter how much their victims might have seen it as decidedly a disservice to them.  Part of eugenics is the assumption that eugenicists, by virtue of their superior minds and supported by Darwinian science, knew better than the "unfit" in judging what was good for them.

But even earlier than that there was the letter Leonard Darwin wrote to his fellow eugenicist, Karl Pearson,

Jan 14 1914 Dear Pearson- I was glad to get your letter, though I am sorry to find that is confirms the impression which I had that you would rather not be asked to dinner. I shall, however, continue to live in hopes that someday we may cooperate in the field of Eugenics, though I agree it is useless to attempt to do so with divergent aims. Thank you for the ticket for the lectures, which I should much like to attend. But I have a committee every afternoon nearly, leaving me weary with the difficult task of dealing with human beings. I should chuck most of it but for a sense of duty and a belief that my Father would have liked me to do what little in me lies as regards Eugenics. Yours sincerely Leonard Darwin

"I should chuck most of it but for a sense of duty and a belief that my Father would have liked me to do what little in me lies as regards Eugenics."

Which was written the day before Leonard Darwin's 64th birthday.  No doubt he felt he was honoring his father's memory on that occasion.   So, agreeing with every other member of the Darwin family, every other colleague of his father, every eugenicist I've ever read addressing this subject, Leonard Darwin's connection of his father to eugenics wasn't merely the product of his alleged senility in 1939.  And even if that is to be asserted, I have found no evidence that the factual matters in that article demonstrate dementia, everything he said that I was able to verify was accurate. That is other than that Leonard Darwin is oblivious to the malignancy of the Nazi government who he clearly believed had turned German thought "in the right direction".  Before the Nazis instituted their eugenics laws, Leonard Darwin was bemoaning in 1922 that Germans were too "conservative" in such matters and he doubted they would institute eugenics.  But that changed.   Clearly, even up till April, 1939,  he believed the Nazis' eugenics laws had turned in "the right direction".   There is nothing else I can see, in the context of his article, that he would have considered to have constituted that "right direction" but the Nazi eugenics laws.

Since last summer I've had a chance to read more of Leonard Darwin's book.  It is very disturbing, comparisons of people to animals in a stockyard -his fable of eugenic sheep a million years from now telling the tale of human dysgenesis due to the breeding of inferior stock - and a very breezy discussion of how to "eliminate" undesirables, including a discussion of the "lethal chamber" as a means and a claim that capital punishment has a decided, though "small" effect in improving the human stock.  I will probably write more about that after I've had a chance to study it more.  As I noted before and in this piece, at every point in which Leonard Darwin claimed his father would have approved of eugenics as he saw it.  Leonard Darwin was almost uniquely qualified to make that claim by 1926, as a person who knew Charles Darwin as no one who has distanced him from eugenics has or ever will.  Other than his brother and fellow eugenicist, Horace and his sister Elizabeth, Leonard was the only one alive who had grown up under Charles Darwin's care.  He was the only one of Darwin's children left by 1939, he was first among the few people who would have even met the man.  His authority to speak for his father, supported by the substance of his father's own, published words is insurmountable. In light of the facts, it is impossible for any honest defense of the man to stand against the claims made by his own son.

No one speaking today has the ability to overcome the testimony of Charles Darwins' sons and family.  No one today has the authority to speak against what they said about him.  No merely academic expert today, no matter how highly regarded, can credibly overcome what they say about their own father.  Their authority on that point is superior to his would be defenders, they heard the man at his most candid and unrecorded.

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The difficulty in this post is that there are few  of Schallmeyer's works available in English translations. I am reluctant to translate any quotes myself due to the fact that I'm not a translator and quibbling about whether or not a translation is accurate is one of the avenues that Darwin's defenders habitually take to deflect attention from the fact that German eugenicists and  scientific- racists have attributed their inspiration to Darwinism.   I've read long, tortured brawls over single words in that.   Few people reading this would be able to deal with  his unusually opaque, technical German. To fill the void left by being unable to provide much of Schallmeyer's text,  I have leaned on a secondary source to help with the case, the online version of Sheila Faith Weiss's book,  Race Hygiene and National Efficiency:The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer,  University of California Press, 1987,  I have provided a link to the Google-book of Schallmeyer's most well known work,  in the original German, as well.

A couple of months ago I came across an encomium to  Friedrich Wilhelm Schallmeyer written by Leonard Darwin, published in the April 1939 edition of Eugenics Review.   It was one of the most shocking things I've come across in researching this issue.  Among other things, Leonard Darwin notes that Schallmeyer cited his reading of On the Origin of Species and Charles Darwin as the inspiration of his eugenics while noting that Schallmeyer is the founder of German eugenics. To English speaking readers this might be a complete surprise because Schallmeyer isn't as well known to us as Francis Galton  the inventor of British eugenics.  But Schallmeyer is a famous name in German eugenics, as Leonard Darwin said he is widely considered the founder of German eugenics, presumably as an organized movement.  I have not read anyone who doesn't grant him that status.  And Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin's own son, who was a major figure in eugenics, himself, has more than enough credibility to make the connection between his father and Schallmeyer.   With what else he said and when he said it, Leonard Darwin's tribute to Schallmeyer is explosive for other reasons as well, but first things first.

There is some indication that some of  Schallmeyer's  Darwinian influence might have been through August Weismann*, who was, himself,inspired by Darwin.   Ernst Haeckel, who is credited as the foremost representative of Darwinism in Germany during its first decades is also considered an important influence on Schallmeyer**.   But in each case,  the influence through others is based in their Darwinism.  And, as we will see, the influence wasn't only indirect.  Schallmeyer, himself, said that his reading of Darwin was independent and his eugenics were attributable to his reading of On the Origin of Species.

Schallmeyer is often said to be a kind of moderate eugenicist,  unusual among eugenicists of all countries by being relatively free of racism.  Relativly.  I would reject,  the idea that any eugenics can be considered "moderate", certainly not after 1945.  Alfred Ploetz, who Leonard Darwin also discusses as Schallmeyer's possible competition for what he believed was the honor of founding German eugenics, was a racist and far more by that time,  not that Leonard Darwin mentions racism in his presentation of priority to Schallmeyer.

Which of these two pioneers [Schallmyer and Ploetz] had a greater influence in changing German thought in the right direction is not for a non-German to attempt to decide.  Schallmeyer, was anyhow first in the field. 

Leonard Darwin's language in that passage is amazing - "changing German thought in the right direction" -  he said that in  April of 1939, months before the Nazis invaded Poland,  six years after the Nazis had already started their eugenics program in 1933. Five months after Kristallnacht and the laws outlawing Jews from civil life.   In September 1939,  they would start killing "those who are not fit to live".  There is every reason for Leonard Darwin to know that's where German eugenics was headed in April of that year.   Leonard Darwin had far more than just ample reason to distance his father from eugenics, if he thought there was any way that could be done.   But he did the opposite.

Leonard Darwin explicitly attributed the direct inspiration of German eugenics to Schallmeyer reading "On the Origin of Species", specifically saying that Schallmeyer did so before he had read Galton.  And he bases that claim on Schallmeyer, himself.    Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin's son, attributed the inspiration of German eugenics, through Schallmeyer, to his father's most famous book, On the Origin of Species*. [ I will point out, again,  that Francis Galton also said that it was his reading of On the Origin of Species that inspired his eugenics.]

... He [Schallmeyer] advocated the medical registration of all citizens and the state control of the medical profession. He was greatly influenced in his writings by the “Origin of Species,” and he was at that time like the author of that work, [Charles Darwin, of course]  a believer in the inheritance of acquired characters, a belief he subsequently abandoned. His ideas were formed in the first instance before he had studied Galton's writings. Indeed it was his desire to study that author's works which led him to learn English, a task perhaps facilitated by his wide knowledge of other languages.  He started his eugenic campaign in Germany uninfluenced by Galton.

It's hard to know what part of that is most disturbing.  Beginning by pointing out that Schallmeyer advocated the medical registration of all citizens and the state control of the medical profession came shortly after Leonard Darwin noted that Schallmeyer's main area of interest.

That medical care by preserving those of weak constitution contributes to the deterioration of the race.

He wrote that right before he attributed German eugenics to his father's influence, in a period when Germany was doing exactly what Schallmeyer advocated as well as things many other, even more infamous, eugenicists advocated.

It is shocking that Leonard Darwin wouldn't try to distance his father from that idea, and not only that idea but Schallmeyer's direct advocacy that government policy be instituted in light of that.  And remember, this is in 1939, the year that Hitler invaded Poland and led Britain into WWII.  A point it's impossible to get used to.   And coming from Leonard Darwin, Charles Darwin's son, a man who devoted his retirement from the military to eugenics whose interest in German eugenics over the previous two decades is documented in his own words.  That his son was honoring Schallmeyer's work as "changing German thought in the right direction" six years into the Nazi eugenics law being in effect, months before they would begin murdering the disabled -  and only a few weeks after that they would incite the beginning of World War II by invading Poland, is nothing short of devastating to the case of saving Charles Darwin from his role in eugenics and even of his indirect responsibility for its most criminal application.   By that time there were very few people who even knew Charles Darwin who were still alive and Leonard Darwin certainly knew him better than anyone else alive in 1939.   Charles Darwin had raised him.  We can only wonder at Leonard Darwin's motivation to have written what he did that, particular, year.

Schallmeyer, who died twenty years before that, can't be expected to understand how subsequent German history would make his ideas so extremely disturbing to read after the Nazis were defeated.  He certainly knew what his colleagues in German eugenics were talking about, beginning with others who influenced him,  Weisman,  Haeckel, and his rival for priority in organizing eugenics, Ploetz.   He continued,  despite his somewhat less vicious version of eugenics, knowing what a larger number of his more famous colleagues were proposing, including things such as infanticide, by that period.

Schallmeyer is an author who doesn't seem to be much available in English.  I've read some of him in German, it's hard going but his inspiration in Charles Darwin is stated in his own words,  his Darwinism is one of the things that won him the Krupp Prize. The book  was  Vererbung und Auslese,  Inheritance and selection, a title whose most troubling associations would have been unknown to Schallmeyer, perhaps.   Schallmeyer won the prize by fulfilling the requirements, which include:

"What can we learn from the theory of evolution about internal political development and state legislation?"

[Translation from :  S. F. Weiss:  Race Hygiene and National Efficiency  The eugenics of  Wilhelm Schallmeyer]

That sentence, read in the knowledge of what that line of German political development and state legislation would take within the next four decades is chilling.

I haven't found an English translation of Vererbung und Auslese and Schallmeyer's Germanis  unusually difficult, taking a great time to read, neverminnd translate.   But it is possible even for someone who reads no German to look through his text to see how much Schallmeyer mentioned Darwin and cited his ideas,  Look for "Darwin.  Darwinismus" etc.  For example,  in the first chapter, in a brief historical survey of the history of evolution,  there is this:

Ein solche stellte Ch. Darwin(1) auf.  Von ihm stammt der Geschichtspunkt der Selektion oder Auslese,  mit dem er und gleichzeitig  A. R. Wallace den Begriff der Entwicklung bereicherte. 

(1) On the Origin of Species 1858 (sic).... 

And even more so:

Umgestaltung unserer gesellschaftlichen Einrichtungen und der sittlichen Anschauungen, fuhren die Grundsatze der Darwinschen Theorie. 

In subsequent pages,  Schallmeyer attributes Darwin's inspiration for the line of German thinking, through Weismann and Haeckel, as well as others, up to himself.

So, we have Leonard Darwin attributing German eugenics to his own father's inspiration, independent of Galton and the testimony of others confirming that.

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Leonard Darwin, himself,   seems to be reluctant to talk about his father in most of the things I've read from him.  He leaves me feeling that he didn't want to name drop his own father, beyond doubt,  a big name in the world and eugenics.  I've never seen him deny that his own, extensive, involvement with eugenics was inspired by his father, as I never have from his three brothers who were, as well, active in eugenics.  He said his father was just that, explicitly, in his book The Need for Eugenics Reform:

“Dedicated to the memory of MY FATHER. For if I had not believed that he would have wished me to give such help as I could toward making his life's work of service to mankind, I should never have been led to write this book.”

Today,  Darwin's four sons involved in eugenics, especially Leonard, are about the largest hurdle for the  campaign to distance Charles Darwin from eugenics.   As is clear to just about anyone who will admit it,  they knew him better than anyone else, except, perhaps Emma Darwin,  their mother, Charles' wife. And as we saw in the letter Charles Darwin sent to Galton, she was the one who read Hereditary Genius to the chronically ill Darwin and he said she liked it, as well.  The case depending on the idea that someone writing after the Second World War would know what Charles Darwin thought and said better than they did can't be sustained except through obvious and total intellectual dishonesty.

Note.  George Darwin, Leonard's brother, Charles Darwin's son, who is named in his effusive letter to Francis Galton praising "Hereditary Genius", was an even earlier active eugenicist, quickly progressing from his father's and Francis Galton's work to suggest legal policies based on their assumptions. George Darwin published " On the Beneficial Restrictions to Liberty of Marriage." in 1873, two years after  The Descent of Man.    

Ithis article, from The International Journal of Epidemiology, it is clear that Charles Darwin was well aware of George's researches and what he was up to aiding him in the effort, even underhandedly.  

I haven't had the chance, yet, to go far into George Darwin's eugenics but it's clear that he was active during his father's life and with his knowledge and support.   I will not go so far as to say, as some have, that Charles Darwin was acting through third parties, perhaps including his own son,  when it came to more controversial aspects of proto-eugenics but it would seem a search for fingerprints is justified.  


* Leonard Darwin had been in contact with German eugenicists for decades at this point,  there are letters between him and the notorious American eugenicist, Charles Davenport, in which he is nervous that the Germans are too "conservative" to support eugenics.

I have not yet sent the invitation to Germany, because Sir A. Schuster says he believes that all the leading scientific societies in Germany are so conservative they will not recognize Eugenics.

There is also direct correspondence to Leonard Darwin from German eugenicists.

** Darwin's views on the importance of natural selection for organic and social evolution, as well as his casual remarks about the desirability of human breeding, did not fall on deaf ears in Germany. In the two decades following the prompt translation of the Origin into German in 1860, numerous scientific books and articles were published that touched on the great English naturalist's evolutionary theory. Although the overall reaction of the German biological community was mixed, many notable scientists such as Matthias Schleichen, Fritz Müller, Carl Gegenbauer, Ernst Haeckel, and August Weismann quickly became active supporters of evolution by means of natural selection. But of all the above-named scientists, Weismann stands out as especially important in the history of German eugenics. Not only did his "modified" version of Darwin's theory give the selection principle an even greater role in organic and social evolution than did the author of Origin himself, but Weismann's views also provided the biological underpinning of the mature eugenic doctrine of Schallmayer and other German race hygienists.

Sheila Faith Weiss: Race Hygiene and National Efficiency:The Eugenics of Wilhelm Schallmayer,  University of California Press 1987 p. 30

One of the best known German popularizers of Darwin, and the most significant for Schallmayer's intellectual development, was the combative and controversial Jena marine biologist, Ernst Haeckel. In his address to the annual conference of the Association of German Scientists and Physicians in 1863 at Stettin, a speech viewed by Kelly as "the public debut of German Darwinism," Haeckel went far beyond the usually cautious Darwin in discussing the broader implications of the new theory. Unlike Darwin, who, in his Origin , did not discuss human evolution for fear of criticism, Haeckel immediately included human beings as the end point of a long evolutionary chain connecting protozoan to people. Throughout his life—in his numerous popular texts and public lectures—Haeckel never tired of fleshing out the larger philosophical and social meaning of Darwinism. The Jena zoologist's rather dubious philosophical system, monism, was a direct outgrowth of his Darwinian outlook,   [Weiss p. 33]   


N.B. I will deal with Haeckel and Darwin in another part of this series.  In the years and decades after Haeckel's bold exposition of Darwinism made him its foremost representative in Germany, Charles Darwin thanked him and encouraged his version of Darwinism.  Charles Darwin's and Thomas Huxley's repeated endorsement of Haeckel and the translations, citations and endorsements of him that came from Darwin's inner circle prevent any honest case being made that Haeckel was some kind of rogue Darwinist.  



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