This post should only be read
after my post about the paragraph that preceded it in The Descent of Man is read, though you can read it after. You won't understand many of the points I make unless you read both as well as passages I refer to in the same book.
I haven't forgotten that I promised to give a fuller treatment to the paragraph Charles Darwin's fans will always refer to while denying that he said what he said in the rest of his second major book dealing with his theory of Natural Selection as explaining evolution, The Descent of Man. I say his fan club and staunch defenders will refer to it because I don't recall ever seeing them give the entire paragraph but, instead, they will cut it and clip it to distort what Darwin said in it. And they never, that I've ever seen, refer to anything else Darwin said immediately before or shortly after this paragraph. As the bulk of that long book, whenever anything impinging on Darwin's belief that the disabled, the economic underclass and members of many families and ethnic groups and even entire races of people, due to their inherent and inherited biological inferiority present a danger to their superiors in the human species. That their survival to reproductive age and ability to have children and propagate their alleged biological inferiority due to the effects of human civilization pose a danger to their superiors and the children of their superiors and, in fact, the entire human species. If you think that's an exaggeration, read the previous paragraph in the post linked to above.
I will give the "aid which we feel impelled to give" paragraph as Darwin published it, then I will point out why it is one of the most hypocritical pieces of double talk in the history of science. Oh, yes, science, this is in a book by one of the most lionized and even deified scientists in the history of science, a book which that scientist presented as science, citing other scientists, supporting their work as reliable, even great science, in some cases in order to bolster what he said. And it was taken as reliable science in the succeeding generations, especially by the eugenicists who Darwin cited in that manner and who, in turn, cited Darwin's eugenic declarations to support their application of Darwinism in involuntarily sterilizing and, in fact, murdering people. Not only eugenics came from natural selection, but the advocacy and practice of killing people deemed to be unfit and whose lives were of lesser worth when and "unfit for life", a concept which was not novel when the Nazis started talking that way.
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The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil. Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind; but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.
That is taken directly from the book, not in the clipped and curried form that it is generally found in sources trying to whitewash what Darwin said.
The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused.
The first thing to notice is that while Darwin, in the previous paragraph laying out his contention of the danger of the underclass and disabled surviving to reproduce, stated his case as hard science, based on reason, he attributes the impulse to give aid to those people to mere feelings. Five words into the statement and Darwin is already discrediting what he's pretending to say in the paragraph.
And he continues by asserting that feeling is an aspect of our biology and not one that is primary but is a mere "incidental result of the instinct of sympathy". "Incidental" has two given meanings in the dictionary, "being likely to ensue as a chance or minor consequence" and "occurring merely by chance or without intention or calculation". So even the mere feeling "to give to the helpless" wasn't even an important or necessary feeling to have. But he's not done with weakening what he's asserting and, also, decreasing the circle in which that feeling is legitimate. He says that feeling to give to the helpless" "was originally acquired as part of the social instincts." Quickly mentioning that Darwin has absolutely no data or observation that could support such a statement about the social lives of our ancestors as science, inventing it merely as an incidental result of his theory of Natural Selection, his conception of that is clearly limited in the range of who such aid is rationally given to. He makes that clear when he claims that it was subsequently - subsequent to its origin in human biology - rendered "more widely diffused".
Nor could we check our sympathy, if so urged by hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature.
In other words, even though "HARD REASON" might urge us to resist giving help to the helpless, we can't resist it. I think the history of human kind shows that we are pretty good at checking our sympathy, Darwin's Britain was, its idea of charity were the death camps that the work houses were, among things he mentions in the previous paragraph as a danger to humanity because it kept too many of the "weaker members" of the population alive long enough to have children. If you don't believe that, read it at the link provided above. The noblest of Brits and those in many other places had no problem with checking that and still thinking well of themselves and others thinking well of them. Try reading some of the Fabian tracts by people like the Webbs and Karl Pearson if you want examples of that.
If the importance of giving aid to the helpless hasn't already evaporated under that regime of undermining it, Darwin was hardly done. Having already made it unimportant, as he pretends to insist that such help must be given, he makes the case that doing that is dangerous, and, in fact, courting disaster.
The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil.
Read that sentence over a few times and consider what it says. "The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient;". Well, yeah, if you've got a cancerous tumor you might have to go through a dangerous and drastic operation to try to save your life. It's rather harder on the patient than it is on the surgeon, something which Darwin doesn't seem to consider. I've known doctors who don't seem to realize that, either. I'll get back to that in a second.
He continues the sentence "but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could be only for a contingent benefit, with a certain and great present evil." What the hell is he saying? Since he is using the metaphor of a surgeon operating on a patient, causing pain and - in the age before antisepsis - putting the patient at grave risk, comparing that to society if charitable aid is given to the the "helpless", it's necessary to figure out what parts of the two things compared correspond to each other.
The surgeon is definitely the one who might or might not "intentionally neglect the weak and helpless," the one in a position to withhold actions that will have an effect. They are also the ones who Darwin says are in a position to know what's good for whoever is getting or having potentially life saving measures withheld from them.
But who's the patient? Who ultimately receives the ultimate benefit or risk? In the case of aid given to the helpless, well, there is no risk to them. They have the possibility of surviving, there isn't any down side of that for them. They clearly aren't who corresponds to the patient from whom tissue is being taken in the surgeon metaphor. Clearly, the patient under the surgeon is society or the human species, and not the entire human species but the ones who are not "helpless". The helpless, in Darwin's metaphor are the tissue to be removed or the diseased or damage to be repaired by the surgeon. The helpless are the source of the danger to the "patient" who is society in general and, ultimately, the human species. They are the tumor or other tissue or pathology which if left as is endangers the life of the patient. Presumably, if a tumor is to be understood, their children would be metastases.
So that leaves us to consider the "contingent benefit" and the "certain and great present evil" in considering either giving aid to the helpless or withholding it. The "certain and present evil" in the case of the helpless is, obviously, their further deprivation and death. The "contingent benefit" is as plainly, Darwin's asserted hygienic effect of their death, their being removed from the body of the human species. Don't forget, not fifty words earlier he was proposing that their death before the age of child bearing would be a great benefit for the entire species, again, look at the link given above.
I will note that in the previous paragraph, medical care of the "weaker members" of the human species, vaccination, are among the things he lists as perilous means of the "weaker members" not being cut out of he body of humanity. That juxtaposition of medical care in these two paragraphs couldn't have been merely accidental. Again, you don't have to take my word for it, you can read it yourself.
No one with any knowledge of Britain in the time of Darwin could have any doubt but that the movers and shakers, those who ran society, those who Darwin would have known were his audience had no problem risking such "certain and great present evil" on behalf of the "weaker members" the "helpless" in order to bet on a "contingent benefit" to those who survived their elimination, especially themselves. Given the laws in even all "civilised" nations, it was a sure bet.
If that hypocritical, typically British aristocratic pose of charity were not enough, Darwin further undermines his pose of calling for "aid".
Hence we must bear without complaining the undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind;
It really makes you feel for those guys, bearing without complaining the weak surviving. And not only them but their children. Anyone who believes there was no complaining about that has never read any of the literature of the British upper class, fiction and, even more so, their professed social welfare and law, the class who instituted the New Poor Law, the death camps which were the work houses, the same class who a generation or two before hanged beggars, even children for stealing a pittance during those wonderful years of the enlightenment. And before that as monarchs as beloved of lore and BBC costume dramas as Elizabeth and her bloody father made being poor in England a crime, a homeless woman bearing a child in a parish not assigned to her punishable by severe and barbaric punishments. The "socialists" in Britain loved to do things like cite the dangers of medical procedures such as cesarean section because it led to babies surviving and the mothers too (Karl Pearson) and the evils of the poor investing pennies in burial societies so that once they had so gratifyingly died their bodies would be given a dignified, if modest, burial. Try reading the myriad of Fabian Pamphlets which can be found online for some real eye opening of cold, cruel, aristocratic British social welfare. It's no wonder such alleged socialists are such a political turnoff.
If there was one fact about the British upper class it is that they had little to no intention to bear the survival of the poor, the destitute, the disabled, surviving and having children without complaint and without taking cruel and drastic means to discourage their existence. That was all well established before Darwin gave them the excuse of an alleged peril their biological nature and survival presented to the entire body of the human species. Those were his "undoubtedly bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind". There was no reason to believe that the already barbaric and cruel means of discouraging the poor, especially those unfit for work in the British industrial system, those living in its urban and agricultural slum, from continued life when they were unable to create wealth, would be intensified by such dire warnings about the danger of their children even being born.
but there appears to be at least one check in steady action, namely the weaker and inferior members of society not marrying so freely as the sound; and this check might be indefinitely increased, though this is more to be hoped for than expected, by the weak in body or mind refraining from marriage.
Just what Darwin meant by this is made especially interesting by his son, George, writing an article calling for the mandatory, involuntary and permanent annulment of marriages if one of the spouses was judged mentally ill. What did Darwin mean by a "check in steady action" if not something that would either restrict or discourage the "weak" from being able to marry? Which is bizarre because Britain, as a result of the New Poor Law already had a disastrous situation in which men who fathered children out of wedlock were exempted from supporting the children they fathered. Which had already led to an increase in infanticide, the murder of children under the "baby farming" industry which sprang up, something already splashed across the newspapers in sensational cases at the time Darwin wrote this. It wasn't uncommon for children, so murdered, to be found wrapped in paper on the street all over Britain. And that's only one aspect of the disaster that would come from preventing the poor, the "helpless" from marrying. I don't know what Darwin imagined his audience would understand as the benefits that were "more to be hoped for than expected" from his dim, faint, barely glowing, not even flickering hope of avoiding disaster. But he pretty well extinguished it as he said it was "more to be hoped for than expected". Given what a stupid idea it was, maybe that was, for the first time in this hypocritical exercise in ass covering, saying something like the truth.
Those were things the audience for Darwin's books knew from reading the British newspapers, following the current events of the Britain they shared with such observers as Charles Dickens. That is essential to realize before you can really get an understanding of what that famous passage really means. The reason that no one in the succeeding generations of Darwinists, the eugenicists, the so-called "Social Darwinists" - who were actually just Darwinists - and others up till today didn't take this paragraph seriously, at all. It was Darwin giving himself the most transparent of ass covering when what he passed off as the most reliable of science was a moral atrocity which favored his family and his economic class at the expense of the helpless, the weak, those who could be considered by any dominant group as inherently and biologically and so, permanently inferior.
I could go on, comparing this piece of nonsense to other passages in the book, the one not far on in the book in which he exempts even the "useless drones" bred by the aristocracy and the wealthy class in general from the impediments of Natural Selection in their far more lavish material wealth they inherit regardless of their fitness than what he says is a total disaster at sub-sustenance levels meted out to the "weaker members" the "helpless". As I first noted seven years ago, no doubt the level of wealth which wasn't insalubrious to the wealthy - but which he identifies as a disaster for the poor and lame - - no doubt included the income levels of the Darwins and Wedgewoods. It is especially interesting in his case as he was a famous hypochondriac and valetudinarian who some modern students of Darwin suspected of chronic lactose intolerance but who, despite his own, perceived unfitness fathered a large family, two of whom died young. But, the odd thing is, that the laws of science he so vehemently asserted as a necessary means of understanding the underclass, didn't seem to apply to him, his family, members of his class and those above them in the British Class System. That was one of the more widespread and enduring aspects of Darwinian science.
