Darwin and W. R. Greg Sometimes called the co-founder of eugenics
If you read Charles Darwin's book, "The Descent of Man", you will read one assertion after another about natural selection in the human population, speculations and purported data taken from contemporary people around the world with some historical references. Those references are taken from many men - I believe all of them were men - of varying scientific credentials. Some of the references Darwin makes can be found online or in a good university library. Those I've looked up are of wildly variable character, some had an impressive looking facade of mathematical tables and calculations and exhibits, Galton and Haeckel, some seem to be more like what would be considered gossip, today. I strongly suspect that a lot of the data wouldn't stand up to current standards of validation but that's for other people to argue. In some of his contentions, Charles Darwin doesn't seem to have any real evidence at all. One infamous passage* that is often cited by those who lay the charge of eugenics against Charles Darwin seems to be an assertion of natural selection to produce an artificial narrative as a substitute for evidence of natural selection, which, completes the circle with the assumption that the artificial evidence constitutes support for natural selection. I will be dealing specifically with the complex of paragraphs that paragraph is part of later. It is followed by another passage with its own history of polemical use.
I'm going to ask a simple question about another passage that has gotten some but less attention for what it might indicate about a place where Darwin contradicts that infamous passage directly. Not only that passage but the contention of his book that natural selection is relevant to human societies and that the struggle of natural selection, resulting in the deaths of the "weaker members" of a society, would leave the survivors in "a vigorous state of health." Here is the passage:
A most important obstacle in civilised countries to an increase in the number of men of a superior class has been strongly insisted on by Mr. Greg and Mr. Galton (19. 'Fraser's Magazine,' Sept. 1868, p. 353. 'Macmillan's Magazine,' Aug. 1865, p. 318. The Rev. F.W. Farrar ('Fraser's Magazine,' Aug. 1870, p. 264) takes a different view.), namely, the fact that the very poor and reckless, who are often degraded by vice, almost invariably marry early, whilst the careful and frugal, who are generally otherwise virtuous, marry late in life, so that they may be able to support themselves and their children in comfort. Those who marry early produce within a given period not only a greater number of generations, but, as shewn by Dr. Duncan (20. 'On the Laws of the Fertility of Women,' in 'Transactions of the Royal Society,' Edinburgh, vol. xxiv. p. 287; now published separately under the title of 'Fecundity, Fertility, and Sterility,' 1871. See, also, Mr. Galton, 'Hereditary Genius,' pp. 352-357, for observations to the above effect.), they produce many more children. The children, moreover, that are borne by mothers during the prime of life are heavier and larger, and therefore probably more vigorous, than those born at other periods. Thus the reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members. Or as Mr. Greg puts the case: "The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman multiplies like rabbits: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts—and in a dozen generations five-sixths of the population would be Celts, but five- sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one-sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal 'struggle for existence,' it would be the inferior and LESS favoured race that had prevailed—and prevailed by virtue not of its good qualities but of its faults."
The entire paragraph sets up the passage I've underlined. Leaving aside W. R. Greg's rather questionable scientific qualifications - though some credit him with Galton as the co-inventor of eugenics - and noting his obvious bigotry against the Irish, a common prejudice that Darwin would seem to share as he doesn't seem to notice it, Darwin seems to have forgotten the huge percentage of the Irish population who died in the potato famine of the 1840s, during his life. We know he knew about the famine because he discussed it in letters as it happened, he was involved with research into blight free potatoes. I don't know if he knew about the other potato famine of 1782, or the even worse one, a century before the worst of all, in the 1740s. Each likewise, reduced what Darwin, as a disciple of Malthus, no doubt, saw as a surplus of the population. Given that Darwin seems to look for every chance to see natural selection, even in all the wrong places, you wonder how he could have missed the chance to see his claim to fame in action, during his lifetime. The Irish population had been repeatedly culled by famine in the century and a half before Darwin wrote "The Descent of Man".
The obvious question is why Darwin believed Greg that the surviving population was "careless, squalid, unaspiring" instead of more vigorous than the Scots who hadn't been subjected to Darwinian struggle for life in such a horrifically dramatic way?
In the book, Darwin is constantly assuring us of the benefits for the population of having lots of people die off, preferably in childhood, weeding out the "weaker members" before they can "propagate their kind", leaving a more vigorous "race". According to his theory, the Irish, by the 1870s should have been one of the most select of all the populations of Western Europe. They'd undergone a repeated culling by famine, abject poverty, military conquest, alien occupation and squalid desperation to an extent that none of Darwins "Anglo-Saxons" had. If there was a test population for his theory as applied to human beings, it would have been the Irish. But he doesn't seem to believe that was the case in the one real life example that was nearest in time and location to him. Clearly, part of that is Darwin's massive bigotry, freely on display throughout the book, but I think it's also a matter of class hatred. The Irish were a permanent underclass under British rule, Irish aspiration was a danger to the British common received opinion. Not to mention the wealth and investments of many British families Darwin knew. Perhaps it was wishful thinking on Darwin's part, believing that characterization of the "Irishman".
I will say, outright, that I think there is a lot more wishful thinking in Darwin than leads to good science. In fact, in this book that was so useful to eugenicists, most of his assertions betray his class bias, his Anglo-Saxon privilege, his racism and bigotry and his male supremacy. But, it being Darwin, you're supposed to overlook those and the effect it obviously has on his second major SCIENTIFIC BOOK dealing with evolution. You are supposed to excuse his disabilities in objective thought due to him "being a man of his time". But what in most cases of hero worship is merely historically dishonest, when it's science, which is supposed to be a very reliable source of knowledge about the world and when that world is the one Darwin addresses in The Descent of Man, that excuse is inadequate. In this case it was extremely dangerous. If scientists want to enjoy the enhanced credibility and repute that comes with the belief that they have taken the greatest possible trouble to produce real science of the greatest possible reliability, they don't get to use the excuse that their insertion of their own self-interest and their prejudice into the work has an excuse.
Whatever the reason for it, Darwin missed the contradiction between his prediction of what would happen in a population that had undergone a devastating struggle for life and the population nearest to him that had undergone that culling. As well, he missed the extreme bigotry of Greg that he parrots to, unwittingly, undermine his proto-eugenic assertions. That should force an inquiry into the rest of Darwin's book and the rest of his record to see how much of it is a product of his time, his social class and other avenues of bias and a distortion of reality. A distortion that is directly responsible for the crime of eugenics. You can look at what the eugenicists were saying about it if you don't believe that.
Darwin As A "Quote-Miner".
John Wilkins did the unintended service of posting the essay of W. R Greg which Darwin took that passage from. With Wilkins commentary. You can see in the comments that I was engaged in researching Darwin back then. I don't know why there is text in the original as given by Wilkins which is not present in The Descent of Man. I would propose that Darwin might have been sanitizing it a bit, making it slightly more palatable. Also, Darwin took it from a longer paragraph. Was Charles Darwin guilty of "quote mining"? It makes you wonder what a careful inspection of other quotes in the book would show in that line.
‘The careless, squalid, unaspiring Irishman, fed on potatoes, living in a pig-stye, doting on a superstition, multiplies like rabbits or ephemera: the frugal, foreseeing, self-respecting, ambitious Scot, stern in his morality, spiritual in his faith, sagacious and disciplined in his intelligence, passes his best years in struggle and in celibacy, marries late, and leaves few behind him. Given a land originally peopled by a thousand Saxons and a thousand Celts,and in a dozen generations, five sixths of the population would be Celts, but five sixths of the property, of the power, of the intellect, would belong to the one sixth of Saxons that remained. In the eternal ‘struggle for existence,’ it would be the inferior and less favoured race that had prevailed,and prevailed by virtue not of its qualities but of its faults, by reason not of its stronger vitality but of its weaker reticence and its narrower brain. "
Greg's comment "fed on potatoes" is a cruel and despicable thing to say about two decades after the famine ended. It is impossible to think that Greg and his readers were unaware of what it meant in that context. Especially considering it was largely because the Anglo-Saxons left them little choice because they exported grain, fish and meat from Ireland for the profit of the English and Scottish landowners and to keep the price of food in England lower than it would have been. And they did in huge quantities during the famine of the 1840s. During the famine of 1782, the ports had been closed to prevent exporting food. Clearly the government during Darwin's time, enlightened by Malthus and the current scientific thinking, decided to not take a chance at preserving the surplus population of the "carelessness, squalid, unaspiring" race.
I have every confidence that is the reason that Darwin sanitized that particular phrase out of the quote as he published it. Such is the quality of the "science" Darwin relied on in the book.
* I have hitherto only considered the advancement of man from a semi-human condition to that of the modern savage. But some remarks on the action of natural selection on civilised nations may be worth adding. This subject has been ably discussed by Mr. W.R. Greg (9. 'Fraser's Magazine,' Sept. 1868, p. 353. This article seems to have struck many persons, and has given rise to two remarkable essays and a rejoinder in the 'Spectator,' Oct. 3rd and 17th, 1868. It has also been discussed in the 'Quarterly Journal of Science,' 1869, p. 152, and by Mr. Lawson Tait in the 'Dublin Quarterly Journal of Medical Science,' Feb. 1869, and by Mr. E. Ray Lankester in his 'Comparative Longevity,' 1870, p. 128. Similar views appeared previously in the 'Australasian,' July 13, 1867. I have borrowed ideas from several of these writers.), and previously by Mr. Wallace and Mr. Galton. (10. For Mr. Wallace, see 'Anthropological Review,' as before cited. Mr. Galton in 'Macmillan's Magazine,' Aug. 1865, p. 318; also his great work, 'Hereditary Genius,' 1870.) Most of my remarks are taken from these three authors. With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly any one is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.
The passage in bold is what is usually taken from the longer paragraph. You will notice that both of the named fathers of eugenics, Galton and W. R. Greg, are cited as authorities in this.
Update: I have decided to follow this with another piece that discusses John Wilkins' claims about what makes Darwin controversial, though I didn't include it in the original series. In responding to Wilkins claim that:
I said that you could only claim that Darwin wasn't a racist by either never reading him or lying about it. For that unpardonable offense, John Wilkins banned me from his blog, which is his right. But that doesn't change anything about the fact that Darwin was a rather extreme racist, ethnic bigot, white, specifically Anglo-Saxon and British supremacist and an extreme elitist who clearly had a deep and abiding faith in the superiority of the wealthy and well born and who explicitly decried the ability of the poor to have children. Anyone who reads The Descent of Man and denies that is a liar, the entire and large industry that promotes the false eugenics free, bigotry free Darwin is just a competing "prevarication industry". And they are stupid to make claims that a full reading of Darwin and his "scientific" citations blows apart. You can't escape addressing what Darwin said if you are going to hold up Darwin as a paragon of truth and science. That is something that his critics, even those who are otherwise dishonest about him, don't need to stoop to.
No comments:
Post a Comment